It's Obvious - The Budget Is about to Burst

The only question is when the economy finally collapses.

Belarus' one-position drop in the World Bank's Doing Business rating compared with last year the Deputy Minister of Economy Dzmitry Matusevich explains with the fact that other countries have held more active reforming in their economies.

Within a year Belarus lost one position and now takes the 38th place in the World Bank's new Doing Business 2018 research.

- If you do not go forward, you start slowing down, economist and entrepreneur Leu Marholin says to zautra.by. - Belarus has chosen less complex positions, according to it. It involves the registration of business, permission to build, development of energy sources. But in these points we have already reached the first positions. The positions cannot be improved anymore, because business now can be registered in two days, not in three, and now it is possible to work without registration.

There are positions due to which our country takes the last positions, and nothing is being done with it.

- What are the weakest points in the business of Belarus for now?

- First of all, it's taxation. Not the very system, but the number of taxes. About 52% of profit is spent on taxes. Taxes in Asian countries reach up to 30%, in European - up to 30-40%, and even in Arab oil-producing countries they barely reach a bit more than 40%, although they have very high profits one could share. Under our conditions, when profits are minimal, when many enterprises are working on the verge of profitability, such a high level of taxes means the limit.

The authority has never been liberal in the economy. There are two options: either the tax burden drops sharply so that the business grows, revenues to the budget increase, or raise the level of taxation in hope to find "sheep" that are not yet sheared. Obviously, we have the second variant. Under our conditions it is not possible to reduce the tax burden, the budget will burst then.

- Can it burst due to sharp increase in the number of individual entrepreneurs?

- In any case, all possibilities of extensive development have already been exhausted. It is fantastic to expect that oil will again cost $100 per barrel. It is useless to cherish hope that we can restore our positions on the Russian market having our poor production. It does not also make sense to hope that we will find new markets. The only question is the way our economy will collapse.

It depends on oil prices, on whether Russia is going to provide us with further assistance, or whether we manage to cadge anything from the IMF. There are no doubts that the collapse will happen.

- What is the true attitude of the supreme authority towards business? Recently, different forums and meetings are filled with speeches of high officials about importance of this business.

- If there are about fifty huge enterprises, they are manageable. We can recall the late 1990s, reforms on Horizont, Atlant, and Brestgazoapparat, when we occupied the Russian market with our products for several years . It seemed that everything was going as it should, you just need to tighten screws, and everything will be fine. But if earlier we exported goods to Russia, now we import the same goods from Russia. This applies to the same TV sets, refrigerators, washing machines, gas stoves.

The situation is as it is, without radical and drastic reforms, and these reforms begin with overhauling of the authorities and the judiciary, there will be no progress. And, generally speaking, there is no hope.