Farewell To IP

Entrepreneurs in Belarus are thinning out.

A little more and individual entrepreneurs in Belarus can be counted without a calculator. Not because the business "failed", but because the state finally stopped pretending that it needed it at all. Almost minus 10% of private entrepreneurship for less than a year is not a crisis, not a "market correction," but a plan to remove private entrepreneurs from business, writes the site "Belarusians and the market".

Roughly speaking, it's a carefully planned sanitary cutting. According to the National Statistics Committee, by November 1, 2025, 214.9 thousand individual entrepreneurs remained in Belarus - 9.4% less than at the beginning of the year. And the process is strictly on schedule, without weekends and regional exceptions.

Geography of farewell to IEs

Minsk voblast is confidently leading - minus 16.2%.

Hrodna voblast - minus 11.5%.

Homel, Vitebsk, Mogilev voblasts - stable reduction.

Even Minsk, which usually lives by its own rules, lost almost every tenth IE.

Particularly revealing, which IEs disappear:

-information and communication - minus 22.8%

-professional, scientific and technical activities - minus 15.1%

-construction, trade, manufacturing - a steady decline

Everything that can scale, work with an intellectual product, customers abroad and without direct supervision. Everything that does not fit into the model of "quietly, locally and without ambition".

There are more legal entities

With this background, the number of legal entities increased by 2.8% - to 160.6 thousand. Formally - business growth. In fact - forced migration. If you do business, then "properly": with accounting, reporting, inspections and the ability to close at the first call.

Who survived and why them?

Short list of permitted activities

The key reason for what is happening is not the economy and not the conjuncture. It is the List of activities allowed for individual entrepreneurs, approved by the Council of Ministers Resolution No. 457.

From January 1, 2026, individual entrepreneurs will be able to engage only in what is written there. The rest - either in legal entities or in memories.

Simplify to the limit, the state left IE where:

- little money

- little growth

- little independence

- a lot of manual labor

The list of "allowed" mainly small retail trade, household services, repair of shoes and appliances, hairdressing and cosmetic services, crafts, separate transportation, local services without complex chains and clients abroad.

And everything related to IT, consulting, design, marketing, engineering, scientific and technical activities, work with legal entities and foreign customers is neatly put out of brackets.

Formally - to restore order. In fact - so that IE ceased to look like an independent economic entity and finally turned into a format of "self-employed with a screwdriver".

"Seamless" transition as euthanasia with a smile

The authorities call what is happening a "seamless transition" to legal entities. Sounds almost like a startup presentation. In practice - about 4 thousand IEs have already "voluntarily" transferred to legal entities, another 1.5-2 thousand plan to do so by the end of 2025. Because there is no alternative.

The simplified taxation system has been taken away. The revenue ceiling of 500 thousand rubles was made the last warning.

The list of activities is rigid and final. The choice is simple: either become more complicated and visible, or disappear from statistics.

"Lice fleas" are very tenacious

Belarus is not getting rid of IE. It is reformatting entrepreneurship under total control. The sole proprietorship has been left as a form for small-scale services and local survival. Growth, scale, export, intelligence - all this is now only through a legal entity and under full supervision.

At some point in 2005, a well-known character, who calls himself a professional in economics, agriculture, sports and space, promised to shake hands with the last entrepreneur. At the time, it sounded like bravado. In 2026, he could not fulfill his promise - he really needed the money that these "lousy fleas" were faithfully carrying to the treasury.

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