BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

09/12/2008

Belarus' government takes preventive measures to minimize impact of global financial crisis

With a view to supporting the real production sector and preserving the macroeconomic stability, the Government of Belarus has taken preventive measures to minimize the impact of the global financial crisis, Economy Minister Nikolai Zaichenko said at a session of the Council of Ministers on December 9, BELTA reported.

According to him, these measures are aimed at shoring up the liquidity of the banks and stability of the currency market, reducing government expenses and supporting the real production sector.

The inventory of all government programmes has been underway to identify the cost optimization opportunities. Nikolai Zaichenko stressed that the approach here should be purely selective. Everything that pertains to real production, innovations and development remains intact. The things that are not that relevant, the things we can do without so far, can be reduced or postponed till better times.

To stimulate business initiative and to support small and medium-sized business, a plan of priority measures has been approved to liberalize the conditions for economic activities. Most important and urgent measures should be implemented by the start of 2009. The documents to reform the state-run management system, land and lease relations, simplify taxation and improve the supervisory activities should be passed by early 2009 too. Reforms also should be implemented in licensing, price formation and administrative procedures. All relevant enactments have been prepared and are pending adoption.

The Economy Ministry has already prepared a plan of action for further liberalization of the economy in H1 2009. The development of business, especially services sector will be boosted. Additional measures have been coined to develop paid services sector and expand the network of non-state consumer service and public catering organisations.

In order to avoid the freezing of turnover assets of the companies-exporters, the Government has decided upon returning the entry VAT before the tax payment for the imported goods to Russia is confirmed. The Government also plans to reduce the time of examining the validity of returning extra amount of VAT deductions in exports from one month till five days from the day of receipt of a relevant application.

The plan also lists such measures as provision of a zero-interest tax credit to the organisations, a partial compensation of bank interests from the budget, preferential energy tariffs for the GDP-forming energy-intensive companies. The authorized funds of the country's four major banks will be increased in order to address the aforesaid tasks and secure the financing of the real production sector.

Source:

http://capital.trend.az/?show=news&newsid=1366285&catid=583&subcatid=540&lang=EN

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