Institutions of Entrepreneurship Promotion
Financial support for entrepreneurship
Belarus offers a wide range of opportunities for entrepreneurship. Everyone can start their own business on the application principle. At the same time, the state provides assistance in selecting industrial premises and land plots for opening a business or expanding it.
Various preferential regimes were successfully enforced in the country.
Apart from that, the country has a network of entrepreneurship promotion facilities that provide information and methodological services to business start-ups, as well as assistance in finding partners, managing cooperative and sub-contractual relations, and obtaining financial and material resources.
In this regard, a special role is given to financial support of business operators. This support is provided by the central and local budgets, including as part of state support programs for small and medium-sized businesses:
- The Belarusian Fund for Financial Support of Entrepreneurs provides:
- financial resources on a reimbursable or gratuitous basis;
- property on the terms of financial rent (leasing);
- guarantees that small businesses will fulfill their obligations under loan agreements and financial rent (leasing) agreements concluded by banks with small business operators.
- Regional executive committees and the Minsk City Executive Committee offer subsidies to infrastructure facilities and reimburse:
- part of the interest for using bank loans;
- part of payments under financial leasing agreements (payment of remuneration (income) of the lessor);
- part of expenses related to participation in and organization of exhibitions and fairs.
- Banks of the Republic of Belarus offer soft credits, including micro-credits, provided by local budgets in line with programs of state support for small and medium-sized businesses and placed in deposits of these banks;
- The Development Bank of the Republic of Belarus together with partner banks (Belgazprombank, Belinvestbank, Belarusbank, Belagroprombank, MTBank, BNB-Bank, Priorbank, Alfa-Bank, BTABank, Bank Dabrabyt, Paritetbank) and leasing companies (Promagroleasing, Raiffeisen-Leasing, АSB Leasing, Agroleasing) provides financial resources under loan agreements and financial rent agreements (leasing).
Information about the state financial support is available on the website, as well as websites of regional executive committees and the Minsk City Executive Committee. For information about the loan support visit the website of the Development Bank, as well as the websites of the above-mentioned commercial banks.
Non-financial support for SMEs
Belarus has a network of support facilities for small and medium-sized enterprises. These are entrepreneurship support centers and small business incubators.
Their main tasks are to provide economic and organizational support for small and medium-sized enterprises:
- entrepreneurship support centers provide assistance with obtaining financial and material resources, offer information, methodological and consulting services, help with training (retraining) and job placement of qualified specialists, conduct training courses and marketing research, as well as provide other kinds of assistance for SMEs;
- business incubators provide small businesses with premises and property, information and consulting services, assistance with finding partners, obtaining financial resources; they also conduct training courses.
By the end of 2019, the network of infrastructure facilities supporting small and medium-sized businesses in Belarus consisted of 109 centers and 26 incubators operating in all regions.
The list of centers and incubators is available on the official website of the Ministry of Economy in the section “Small and medium-sized businesses”.