Choice for small businessmen: leave markets or unite

Representatives of small business will have either to leave the market or unite to survive.

BelaPAN learnt if from sole traders who attended the meeting with Aliaksandr Lukashenka on March 17 to discuss the regulation and development of certain types of business activity.

According to Inna Aliakseyenka, a trader at Expobel shopping centre, it was proposed at the meeting to give market vendors an opportunity to sell goods without documents but raise taxes for them.

“We pay the double single tax and double VAT. The coefficient will be raised by 0.5 each quarter of the year. Many will have to quit business. We don't have another choice.”

Inna Aliakseyenka is satisfied with results of the meeting. “We expect working conditions to be eased after the meeting with Lukashenka. We were on the razor edge before he interfered. Lukashenka suspended decree No.48 on fines and penalties. It is due to him that the period of selling goods without documents has been extended until January 1, 2016,” Inna says.

Tamara Bahachova, the head of the market council of Maladzechna, says the “nine-month delay won't solve all problems” of small business. Sellers who have “little goods or no money will close”, and some of them will find “new jobs, while others will perhaps consolidate their funds to work together”, she supposes.

According to Bahachova, representatives of big business were against giving another respite that would allow market traders to sell goods without documents. “But we managed to prove that we and big business do not have equal capital and that small business is widely represented in regions, where all people hardly survive,” she said.

Bahachova told Lukashenka about low competitive ability of Belarusian goods in comparison with imported ones in what concerns design and prices. For example, a coat of the Belarusian company Elema is cheaper in Moscow than in Belarus.

“At least we have a hope that market traders will work on April 1,” Bahachova stressed, speaking about results of the meeting. “We think what further steps we should take. We need to do something with certificates. The decision [on certificates] must be revised so that we can obtain them in Russia.”