Yuri Dankov: “Where have you been? People have gone to jail”

A well-known Belarusian businessman has told about conditions for doing business in Belarus.

The statement of the World Bank’s Doing Business 2011 report that Belarus is among top ten countries that have improved business environment, has been commented for Radio Svaboda by Yuri Dankov, a Minsk-based businessman, an owner of Dankov Club. He sees certain improvement of business conditions in Belarus:

“I must say frankly that there are fewer inspections now. As for paperwork and reporting requirements, I cannot say that bookkeepers are complaining about them greatly now,” the businessman said.

Dankov is skeptical about promises of the government of further liberalization: they will liberalize since January 1, and later they will cancel that.

“The situation is perplexing: earlier entrepreneurs were called “lousy merchants”, and all of a sudden they are given freedom, no licenses are required… People were put to prison for business activities without licenses, they paid money, fines, and now it turns out that it is not needed starting from the next year. They needed that before. And what will happen tomorrow? Will we be told: sorry, we have been informed that it is bad this way, let’s abolish everything and return previous practices?” Yuri Dankov asks himself.