In a stormy flow of discussions initiated by the Decree # 760 of the President the view of the director of Vitebsk Entrepreneurship Support Centre Mr. Leonid Shur is accepted as being outside. “Implementing the points of the Decree # 760, Mr. Shur says – we will make a step to international rules of doing business”. There are other pluses also which, the head of Vitebsk ESC says, can follow in case of coming of this Decree into force.
To be or not to be – individual entrepreneurs
The majority of individual entrepreneurs met the beginning of the new 2007 year being confused. The Presidential Decree # 760 29.12.2007 determined that beginning with January, 1 2008 the activity of individual entrepreneurs can be implemented only by recruiting the members of the family and close relatives (before this it was possible to recruit “strangers”, once unlimited number, then – no less than three).
The state in some way calls individual entrepreneurs, at least those who want to have the employed personnel-non-relatives to transform in legal entities. This leads to obtain new licenses, transition of the property rights etc. That leads to some inconvenience, some costs. Some people with this regards say even about possible reduce of the entrepreneurship potential in general. Some individual entrepreneurs started applying to us not saying their names with an offer to hold a protest action. Although, let`s take into account that implementing the Decree #760 Belarus will make a step to the international rules of doing business. Because nowadays individual entrepreneurs exist only on the post-Soviet area. Now Russia joins the World Trade Organisation, tomorrow it will be the turn of Belarus to join WTO. That’s why we should play by the global rules that require that all businessmen-employers are legal entities. And those who want to work, say, privately get the correspondent permission and do their business and pay the income tax. However when such person wants to employ someone he/she is registered as a legal entity.
Thus, if we say about the pluses of the Decree mentioned above, we should note that first of all the easily forecasted increase of the number of legal entities.
And individual entrepreneurs will remain in our country. Even a new source of increase of their rows. Because the current employed personnel-non-relatives who wish to cooperate with the given individual entrepreneurs in the future should be registered themselves as individual entrepreneurs and to conclude with their former “master” the correspondent agreements.
In general, the number of entrepreneurs should grow. And the number of employed personnel in the economy should grow also (especially that many people worked for individual entrepreneurs, so to say, illegally, and now they will have to legalise). It means that the tax payments to the budget should also increase. More over, the growth of number of legal entities will increase the cashless turnover that will lead to reduce of the emission and finally to reduce inflation. Here are some more “pluses”.
The director of Vitebsk Entrepreneurship Support Centre – Mr. Leonid Shur.
