MINSK, 8 September (BelTA) – Business liberalization should provide for unified rules and predictable legislation, BelTA learned from Pavel Topuzidis, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Belarusian company OOO Tabak-Invest, on 8 September.
Pavel Topuzidis said: “Business liberalization is not a cure-all solution. It is a way to give private companies more opportunities to earn money directly. Yet oversight is needed.”
The businessman mentioned the excessive number of fire safety rules and sanitary regulations. In his opinion, many of them became outdated a long time ago but then there are those, which have to be observed. This is why it is necessary to update the relevant regulations. “While we built supermarkets in the past bearing in mind one thousand fire safety rules, today it will be much easier for us to build things with only 80 rules,” noted the businessman.
Unified rules for everyone are another mandatory point. “You cannot allow a self-employed businessman not to pay taxes and force a major business to pay taxes because the latter has a lot of money. Rules must apply to everyone. It is how I understand liberalization,” said Pavel Topuzidis.
Speaking about tax legislation, Pavel Topuzidis stressed that tax laws should be predictable and stable. “We have the Tax Code. It has been decided that the Tax Code should not be amended for three years and will not be amended. In this situation I can calculate how much I will earn and how much I can spend. If the legislation is amended every year, it makes things difficult,” he noted.
