Investment, taxation terms in Belarus ‘most competitive in Customs Union’

– Belarus has enabled the most competitive terms of taxation and profit in comparison with partners in the Customs Union. The statement was made by Belarusian Finance Minister Andrei Kharkovets at the presentation of Belarus’ economy and investment opportunities in Paris on 6 June, BelTA has learned.

For the sake of raising the investment appeal and creating additional incentives for investors the Belarus government has established preferential taxation regimes, which are applied to the IT industry, export, and other priority kinds of activities.

There are six free economic zones in the country, which residents are exempt from profit tax for five years, exempt from real estate tax, and are subject to reduced rates of the value added tax. Residents of the Hi-Tech Park are exempt from profit tax, VAT, customs duties, and property tax. It is important that considerable investment benefits can be achieved if the investor registers as a resident of the Chinese-Belarusian Industrial Park.

Andrei Kharkovets stressed that last year Belarus completed the taxation system reform. The system is now compliant with generally recognized international standards. In particular, as part of the reform the number of paid taxes and the periodicity of their payment has been reduced as well as the tax burden (nearly 4 percentage points down in the last four years).

“In 2011 the state budget surplus was close to 3% of the GDP. Last year the surplus was 0.7% of the GDP. The budget law for 2013 specifies zero deficit,” stated the Finance Minister. He also underlined that as far as this indicator is concerned, Belarus traditionally looks better than several countries with higher credit ratings and standings in the OECD country risk classification.