Doing business in Belarus

Minsk, October 11, 2007 —The World Bank Group, conducted a press conference in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Economy to reflect the changes in business environment in Belarus. In 2007 the Belarusian Government made steps to simplify administrative procedures for small and medium-sized business in Belarus, a fact duly reflected in the World Bank Group’s Doing Business 2008 Survey.  This year Belarus moved up the scale by 19 places from 128 to 110 compared with the previous year. The improvement in the ranking is due primarily to reforms in two of the areas covered by the Doing Business report – starting a business and protecting investors.

Significant results were attained in the regulatory area of business registration. Partnering with the Ministry of Justice, a one-stop shop for business registration was introduced.  The reform resulted in 16 procedures being reduced to 10, time from 69 to 48 days, and cost from 26% to approximately 9% of GNIpc. (Doing Business 2008 Survey).The joint IFC/World Bank Doing Business 2008 Survey has listed Belarus as a Top 10 Reformer in the category of Starting a Business, results largely attributable to Ministry of Justice and IFC cooperation. Speaking at the press-conference the First Deputy Minister of Justice Petrash A.S. said: “Although the registration procedure in Belarus has seen significant improvements, more decisive steps are needed. Currently the Ministry of Justice is working on the introduction of the Unified State Register and the declarative principle of registration.”

In 2006-2007 the World Bank Group cooperated with the Ministry of Economy on streamlining business permits issuance procedures. The pilot project on permits issuance simplification in Mogilev (2006) resulted in reducing the time needed for obtaining permits by up to 3 months. Following the sub-national level project the necessity of permits reform was elevated to the national agenda. Subsequently, this led to the creation of a national level Working Group by the Prime Minister, which aimed to simplify 1,300 existing administrative procedures and to reduce their number.  IFC has been invited to participate in the working group and provide substantive input into the reforms process.  IFC also created a special module on Belarusian business portal BEL.BIZ which enabled the dialogue between the government and private sector for meaningful reforms of administrative procedures -  Reforma.BEL.BIZ.