Entrepreneurs to be thrown to front-line to tackle crisis

Officials warn businessmen they are expected to unload stores but not to make “slogans and statements”.

Expressing a desire to help the authorities to unload stocks and increase the rate of Belarusian goods in trade in exchange for reducing tax burden and administrative pressure, the business shouldn’t forget about one of the main precepts of bureaucracy: “Any initiative will be punished”. The officials will blame the business if fulfilment of the governmental tasks is failed, AFN writes.

Alyaksandr Tapilin, a representative of the Ministry of Economy, said n September 22 that the authorities count on significant increase in selling home-produced goods by small business entities, BelaPAN reports.

“The rate must grow by the end of the year. An increase of 30–40% will be good,” the official said and noted that the message of the business on readiness to unload stocks and work for export was “understood and the government does its best to remove obstacles”.

“We noticed that the rate of selling home-produced goods by small business entities was 1–3% at the end of August,” Tapilin said and added that the monitoring at the end of September showed a slight increase in this rate – by 0.5¬–0.7% a week.

“Now all obstacles and restrictions will be removed, all organizational steps on unloading stores will be taken, and we’ll see at the end of the year whether this rate increases,” the official said.

According to him, 6 legal documents on improving conditions for business activities have been prepared, BelTA reports.

“All offers of individual entrepreneurs and small business entities have been taken into consideration,” Tapilin stressed.

If the business fails to perform the tasks and doesn’t show significant increase in this rate by the end of the year, “we’ll have to state that businessmen can’t offer measures on tackling the crisis expect for slogans and statements,” the officials concluded.