Belarus President signs Law on Entrepreneurship

The document establishes a renewed architecture of entrepreneurship and envisages two categories engaged in entrepreneurial activity. First, legal entities, which are small organizations with up to 100 employees, medium-sized organizations with up to 250 employees, and large organizations with over 250 employees. Second, the category of individuals, which includes artisans, owners of countryside guesthouses, self-employed persons, individual entrepreneurs. Types of activities that individual entrepreneurs will be able to carry out are to be determined by the government by July 1. Those that will not be included in the planned list, will not be able to register as new individual entrepreneurs as from October 1. The law also established the obligation for existing individual entrepreneurs to re-register as legal entities by January 1, 2026 in. At the same time, a simplified procedure is introduced for their transition to commercial organizations with continuity of all rights and obligations to the budget and counterparties. The law provides for new types of financial support, including reimbursement from the budget of a portion of capital expenditures in the implementation of investment projects with loans from the Development Bank. The right to receive state financial support is expanded for medium-sized businesses. Previously, this tool was available only for small businesses.