Ales Makayeu: Lukashenka Doesn't Get To Shake Hands With Last Entrepreneur

Although the number of entrepreneurs is reduced in Belarus by five thousand people a year.

The number of small entrepreneurs is reduced by about five thousand a year, and fewer people enter the business.

About 200 thousand remained from the previous number of 280 thousand individual sole traders, the former leader of the entrepreneurial movement, and now the deputy chairman of the Razam Solidarity Movement, Ales Makayeu, reports to Radio Racyja.

– The number of sole traders is reduced, the trade is on the wane. Retail networks’ journeymen come to work in the markets. The problem, as we know, is with the Uzbek goods, which are distributed according to the corruption scheme, and that cannot happen without the authorities. Who is comfortably off due to this, an official or Lukashenka’s relatives, we don’t know, without the “support” at the very top this scheme wouldn’t be there.

According to Ales Makayeu, despite the plight in the sphere of small and medium business, Aliaksandr Lukashenka doesn’t get to shake hands with the last entrepreneur, as he once promised, because sole traders managed to survive under worse conditions:

– Entrepreneurs managed to survive under much worse conditions, even in time of war. It is difficult for people to enter; you need a large investment of money to open even a single selling spot – infrastructure, goods, a package of documents. 90% of sole traders have no salary, something is spent on food, a lot of people work at a loss – this is very hard. Now there’s crisis and the state is getting worse.

“The weak purchasing power of the population makes it less and less profitable to be engaged in small business in Belarus. Also the requirements of documents for goods from Russia put sole traders to a lot of trouble,” – Aliaksandr Makayeu adds.