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Belarus hopeful of improvement of its Doing Business rating

Belarus' rating in the World Bank's 2011 Doing Business survey can rise to the 48th place, Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Kabyakow said at a meeting of the Council of Ministers' Presidium in Minsk on July 13, as quoted by BelaPAN.

Referring to interim estimates by the economy ministry, Mr. Kabyakow said that Belarus could rise up to 10 places in the survey from its current 58th place.

The deputy prime minister said that the government had drawn up a plan of action to improve the country's Doing Business ranking and 23 measures under the 47-item plan had already been carried out. "Twenty-seven draft rules have been drawn up and 15 of them have been adopted in the course of the implementation of the plan. This makes it possible to speak about conducting reforms in five categories of the survey - taxation, lending, international trade, construction permits, business liquidation," he said.

Mr. Kabyakow said that five more liberal measures were in the pipeline, including a bill of changes to the Economic Entity Law.

"The economy ministry expects the enactment of the law, which has been devised with WB experts' involvement, to make it possible for Belarus to enter the top 20 or 30 countries in terms of investor protection," he said.

He revealed that some of the proposed measures had been rejected by the Presidential Administration. These include measures that would reduce the period of employment termination notice from two to one month and cut the amount of benefits paid to laid-off employees or employees of liquidated businesses from three to two times their monthly pay.

The Belarusian government's determination to secure a higher rating for the country in the World Bank's Doing Business survey will not lead to a better business environment, Syarhey Balykin, leader of the Association of Small and Medium-sized Enterprise, told BelaPAN.

"There's a great risk that our government will start chasing positions in the World Bank's survey instead of creating a normal business and investment environment in the country. This will lead to a mechanical rise up the rankings but the real situation will not change for businesses," Mr. Balykin predicted.

The importance of Doing Business rankings and their influence on investment climates should not be overestimated, the expert stressed. "This is a waymark but not the most important one," he said.

Belarus could even further simplify its business registration rules and "it would formally lead to the improvement of the general rating but the true situation will not change considerably because of this," Mr. Balykin said.

At the same time, he added, some steps toward the improvement of the country's business climate might fail to improve Belarus' rating in the survey.

Belarus rose from the 115th place in 2007 to 58th place in 2010 in the Doing Business rankings but "no increase in business activity is observed in the country, investors are not coming here, the local private sector is not developing, on the contrary, it's getting tougher for it to operate," according to Mr. Balykin.