Mahiliou Sole Traders Held Spontaneous Rally

Sole traders state that they will go to protest to Minsk, if they are not heard.

During their meeting today businessmen have collected more than hundred signatures under an appeal to the chairman of the regional executive committee Uladzimir Damaneuski, for him, as it is written in the letter to him, “to help in addressing the matters related to sole traders’ activities, amending the Decree №222, and a moratorium on inspections of controlling bodies for six months.” Sole traders have made arrangements about the meeting with officials on the phone. It will take place at 15 o'clock, Radio Svaboda reports.

More than a hundred traders of Russian light industry goods came to the third meeting in Vilenski market. That time the meeting was watched by people in civilian clothes. They were filming what was going on.

At the beginning of the meeting it was announced that sole traders were making an appeal to the city authorities: small businessmen want to meet with officials and explain the situation they have found temselves in.

“We are going to address the appeal to the city administration. And if we fail to do that, then we will go to the square in Minsk. Let them take decisions, for how long can we suffer? We have no savings to stay at home. We have no resources,” – sole traders said at their meeting.

When the appeal was ready, the participants of the meeting actively started putting their signatures under the document. One of them said that the government should hear sole traders:

“I always believe in that, because to leave such a part of the population out of work, the state – out of taxes – this is not profitable to the authorities. With these decrees the powers of the state are leading themselves into a dead end, and now they do not know how to backpedal, and what is the most important, to admit they were wrong. The authorities understand that. We ask for a meeting with government officials, the suspension of the Decree 222, and the moratorium on inspections,” – the sole trader said.

The woman, we were talking to, expressed the hope that the discussion of the situation involving all the concerned parties would bear fruit and a reasonable compromise would be found.

While the sole traders were holding the meeting, they were watched by their colleagues, who came to their working places, as well as the market’s second-hand traders.

We remind that from January 1, 2016 Belarusian sole traders massively ceased trading. From that date, according to the decree of Lukashenka, sole traders cannot sell the goods of light industry, imported from the countries of the Customs Union, without certificates. Up to January 1, 2016 they were given the right to sell residual stocks imported to Belarus without supporting documents before July 1, 2014, on inventory files registered with the tax authorities.