The coronavirus harms not only human health. The pandemic affects the economy of entire countries as well as the SMEs. Belarus is no exception here.
Zero income and uncertainty is how Alyaksei describes the situation in the Homel clothing market. He is a local businessman. Border closures, primarily with Russia, strongly impact on local businesses.
“With zero income after winter we see ahead of us the opening of the season. And it is happening behind closed borders. This is a complete disasterm,” emotionally speaks local businessman Alyaksei Baikin.
The hotel business is also facing big problems. There are no tourists in Belarus now, therefore the hostel owners have to think about how to survive.
“It would be nice if they gave us some rent-free period. It would be ideal from the point of view of tax, if they introduced some quarantine regime. It would be nice if there were force majeure conditions in the agreements. As of today, we are fine,” says the owner network of hostels in the center of Minsk Kseniya Kurus.
To protect small business in a difficult situation, the association of entrepreneurs Perspektyva made proposals to the State:
“We need financial support for entrepreneurs to save them. We suggest there is an entrepreneurial portfolio of the bank. Each sole proprietor would get 1 thousand USD grant and 3 thousand USD interest-free loan for 5 years. Where would this amount come about? Because job creation in this country costs about 4-5 thousand dollars,” says the chairman of the organization, Anatol Shumchanka.
But not all trade fields face are in such a fix.
“This week we received messages from people asking if we work in the quarantine. Sales have no impact, and we welcome that. But there’s no surge either, all is quite stable. People are not afraid, but there is a demand to stock up for the future,” shares his experience Pirumava Ala, the owner of the Evolution sex shop.
In an effort to reach out to government agencies entrepreneurs created a petition, which calls to introduce tax breaks for small and medium-sized businesses. Within a couple of hours, it collected more than 500 signatures. There are plans to appeal to the Ministry of taxes and fees, as well as the Ministry of Finance of Belarus.
Kseniya Tarasevich, Belsat
