Homel sole traders: No one to be left to work after the New Year

Establishment of wholesale markets won’t redeem the position of Belarusian sole traders.

On July 22 Alyaksandr Lukashenka signed Decree №334, according to which a large industrial and logistics hub is to be created in the settlement of Bolbasava, Vitsebsk region. It is supposed that it is to become a rival of Cherkizovsky market in Moscow, Russia, and would allow entrepreneurs to work with suppliers with no middlemen involved. Besides, it is planed that this centre is to become one of the important points on the way of goods from China to Europe.

Businessmen believe that opening an analogue of “Cherkizovski marketplace” in Belarus is pointless, Radio Racyja informs.

- I do not know what future this project has, but at the moment prices for goods we buy in Belarus are simply noncompetitive. I have bought products from two ranges, and I have sold only one dress out of the eight over the summer! Firstly, the goods are not cheap. I added 20% of trade margin, and paid taxes for Br11 million! So is it possible to pay such taxes and rent when the trade margin is 20%? We have a rent of Br12 million per a trading place already. And it is not a pavilion of 300 square metres, it’s a small vendor kiosk. We rent is per 30 Euro per square metre – told a sole trader from Homel Svyatlana Kalachova.

- What do you think about prospects of the Belarusian “Cherkizovsky Market”?

- I do not even know what prices for goods, what assortment of goods they are going to have. Now the assortment of goods in Belarus is extremely poor. If sole traders have documents for goods, it means that everyone in the row of shopping stalls has the same swimming suits. We all went to a firm, and we were given the same goods. And we have to sell that in some way. As a buyer, are you happy with such a situation? There is absolutely no variety. So I do not know, what we are offered in the new centre, but my opinion is – it should have been done 5 years ago, not today. When they need a law to fleece businessmen of their money once again, the law is immediately passed. And when we want our needs to be satisfied, it is decided for decades. I want to repeat – it is almost impossible to work now. There is no selection of goods, the pricing policy is awful. And customers do not buy anything now. Those who still have money, do not buy our goods, as everyone wants a wide range of goods. All we have is to observe silently, how we are rolling into the abyss.

- But market traders are working…

- What else could they do, if they had been working at the marketplace all the time? They are too young to become pensioners, and no one is going to hire them. So maybe it is good that a logistics centre is to emerge, but as for me, for example, I have lots of questions about that, and I want to receive answers. What assortment of goods will be there? What prices they will have? Who will supply goods there? Maybe a woman, who had been working for Belkoopsoyz (Belarusian cooperative trade union) all her life? Then all of us are going to sell the same goods. It is possible that after the New Year there would be no one to work. Who will need this Belarusian “Cherkizon” then?

Another Homel market trader, with an experience of 20 years, a member of the council of Perspektiva republican public association, Zhana Hubkina, told how the small business survives today, why she has no pity for her colleagues, and what the Belarusian marketplaces are going to experience after the New Year.

- I know small self-employed businessmen who have moved to Bryansk, Moscow. My prediction is: since January 1, 70% of marketplaces are to become empty, -- she said. – In the meantime many sole traders are looking for another job. Some of them left for Russia or Ukraine, some are searching for a job at state enterprises here. But to be a sole trader is stigmatizing in our country. You are going to have the lowest pension, Br1.5 million. That is the same sum our “socially oriented state” pays to people who had not been working at all.