MINSK, 10 March (BelTA) – Amendments to the law on investments are designed to observe and protect investors' rights, BelTA learned from Belarusian Deputy Economy Minister Anzhelika Nikitina before a roundtable session held in the upper chamber of the Belarusian parliament on 10 March to discuss the effectiveness of the measures being taken to improve the country's investment climate.
According to the source, as part of the comprehensive approach to amending investment legislation the Economy Ministry spent the entire last year working on the law on investments and presidential decree No.10, which also applies to investment legislation. “Today we are submitting for consideration of the Council of the Republic a law on investments, which is primarily designed to observe and protect rights of investors. We are also amending the law within the framework of the effective legislation and are bringing our approaches closer to approaches of the Eurasian Economic Union member states,” Anzhelika Nikitina explained.
Amendments to the law on investments clarify the terms “investments” and “investment projects”. The amendments introduce a stabilization proviso, which applies to tax laws. “We fully protect rights of investors if a sudden nationalization or re-privatization happens. Investors will have the right to receive an effective and timely compensation for their investments and foreign investors will have the right to choose the currency of the compensation. Apart from that, the amendments touch upon the situations when some issues may emerge in the course of pretrial resolution of disputes. We had 3 months as the norm in the past. We are extending it to 6 months because the practice indicates that we resolve all the issues with investors before court trials. The measure will not affect concession agreements and public private partnership agreements. Those are governed by dedicated laws,” the official explained.
According to the deputy economy minister, plans have been made to limit the claims an investor may have to deal with. Government agencies will not be able to present claims to an investor for three years after money was invested except for claims relating to taxation, customs legislation, criminal laws, and administrative responsibility. “Apart from that, we are bringing the law on investments into compliance with our signed investment agreements. There are more than 60 of them. We are also realigning lawmaking practices with those of the Eurasian Economic Union taking into account Belarus' plans to join the WTO,” Anzhelika Nikitina added.
In her words, the law on public private partnership is also in development. It is supposed to be forwarded for consideration of the parliament by September 2021. Work is also in progress on amending the legislation concerning presidential decree No.10.
In turn, Chairwoman of the Economy, Budget, and Finance Commission of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly of Belarus Tatiana Runets noted that raising external investments is the main priority for any economy. “Belarus has enabled rather good conditions for attracting investors. The figures are self-explanatory. In 2020 Belarus raised $1.4 billion in foreign direct investments, 6.6% up from 2019. Certainly, Russia is one of the main investors. Its investments increased by about 16% in comparison with 2019. A total of over 80 countries invest in the Belarusian economy,” she said.
Tatiana Runets underlined that the world is changing rapidly, international competition for investors is fierce. “This is why we have to improve the legislation. Today we are going to discuss one of the important bills concerning investments. We will hear out all the interested parties and may offer more comfortable conditions to investors. But as we sign any investment agreement, we have to remember interests of our country in addition to meeting investors half-way,” she said.
