MINSK, 7 June (BelTA) – A draft presidential decree designed to improve the investment climate in the China-Belarus industrial park Great Stone was presented before Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko on 7 June. The head of state approved of the suggested changes, the decree is supposed to be signed soon, BelTA learned from Head of the Administration of the China-Belarus Industrial Park Great Stone Aleksandr Yaroshenko.
The key changes include the facilitation of administrative procedures, greater leeway for the park's administration to make decisions, the expansion of the types of business the park welcomes, support for startups, and special terms for anchor investors. The changes are meant to cut down on red tape and attract investors to the industrial park, Aleksandr Yaroshenko noted.
Broader authority of the park administration
The park administration will take over additional functions from municipal authorities. Nearly 60 new administrative procedures will become available in the park's one-stop service center. “We will have a total of about 90 procedures of the administrative permissive nature. Those constitute 45% of the procedures a business needs in any part of Belarus,” the official said.
The one-stop service center will be able to offer its services not only to resident companies but to all the companies that operate in the park as well as natural persons, who live or work in the park.
The expansion of business types
The draft presidential decree provides for expanding the main areas of activity of the industrial park in order to expand the number of residents. The new areas include the manufacturing of medical products, medical services, lab diagnostics, and biopharmaceutics. A resident company already intends to set up a traditional Chinese medicine center. Aleksandr Yaroshenko also mentioned 5G technologies as a promising direction. “We've already had a pilot project like that. The decree will create the legal base for introducing 5G technologies and artificial intelligence,” he explained.
Support for innovative activities
A center for transforming R&D accomplishments was opened in the China-Belarus industrial park Great Stone in late 2020. It is a Belarusian-Chinese joint project. Within the first two years various startups will be able to enjoy all the benefits a resident company is entitled to.
“After selecting an appropriate project via a contest we will look at intermediate results of the project six months after incubation. If the results are positive, we will allow this project to grow from an idea into a commercial project and will offer it an opportunity to become a resident of the park,” Aleksandr Yaroshenko said.
The official noted that innovations are a very risky area of work. If startups get no support, then as a rule only one in ten survives. If the state and investors help young companies, the survival rate reaches 70-80%.
Preferential terms for anchor investors
Additional preferences will become available to projects with investments at least as large as $50 million. The preferences include preferential prices for land plots, simpler customs administrations, and other ones.
The park administration is convinced that the arrival of major investors will allow expanding the cluster type of business. Later on the government will be able to authorize preferences to enterprises outside the park but only to those, which contribute to the capital and to manufacturing processes of the resident companies.
Apart from that, the decree will allow companies that found subparks to become resident companies in order to encourage the creation of subparks, primarily subparks of major Chinese regions, in particular, Sichuan Province, Shaanxi Province, and Tianjin Province.
When will the changes be implemented?
After hearing today's reports the head of state approved of the key novelties of the draft presidential decree on the operation of the China-Belarus industrial park Great Stone. According to Aleksandr Yaroshenko, the decree is expected to be passed soon. He explained that work on the document had been going on for a long time, multiple factors had been taken into account, including modern business operation terms and the economic situation as a whole. Many proposals had been submitted by resident companies taking into account the experience of their work in the park. Proposals had also been worked out in association with the Chinese Commerce Ministry. “The life itself requires such innovations because one cannot be idle even from the legislative point of view,” Aleksandr Yaroshenko said.
“The key requirement of the head of state in the course of discussing this project is what effect, what results (primarily economic and financial ones) the Great Stone project may get from the new legislation,” Aleksandr Yaroshenko continued. “We set out to achieve serious economic results. We don't want to inflate the number of resident companies or secondary indicators. The project has to benefit the Belarusian economy and has to work in interaction with it. It is the key consideration.”
In his opinion, the results the China-Belarus industrial park Great Stone demonstrates now confirm the park's effectiveness. “I'd like to proudly say that Belarusians constitute over 80% of the park's workers and they get decent, high salaries – about Br2,700,” Aleksandr Yaroshenko mentioned as an example.
In his words, every ruble in the tax preferences granted to the park resident companies results in about ten additional rubles poured into the country's economy. As for investments, the ratio is 1 to 60, infrastructure investments – 1 to 9. “In other words, the effect is rather good, positive, serious. Now we have to scale up and develop these figures, this success,” the head of the park administration stressed.
