Commentary to Decree No. 35 of 16 January 2014
On 16 January 2014 President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko signed Decree No. 35 “On the organization of car production”.
The document has been passed with a view to enabling favorable conditions for the production of new kinds of automobiles in Belarus. The decree envisages the implementation of an investment project to establish an enterprise to assemble cars in Borisov District, Minsk Oblast.
The investment project includes the construction and commissioning of a factory to make cars in addition to the construction and commissioning of internal and external engineering and transport infrastructure facilities. The project will be implemented in line with the memorandum on advancing cooperation in car manufacturing. The memorandum was signed by the Belarusian Industry Ministry and the Chinese corporation Geely. The deadline for building the factory is 1 July 2019.
The Belarusian-Chinese joint venture BelGee has been chosen to design and build the factory and the internal and external engineering and transport infrastructure facilities. Founded by the Belarusian automaker BelAZ, the Chinese company Geely, and the private joint-stock company Soyuzavtotechnologii, BelGee is a resident company of the free economic zone Minsk. The company has been established for the sake of manufacturing Geely brand cars.
The municipal capital construction enterprise UKS Borisov is the customer in having the internal and external engineering and transport infrastructure facilities for the factory designed and built taking into account the relocation of the existing engineering networks from the construction site.
While putting together the draft investment program for 2014, the central government will have to appropriate funds for designing and building the internal and external engineering and transport infrastructure facilities for the factory. In line with the decree the Minsk Oblast administration will lease a 118.87ha land plot inside the free economic zone Minsk to BelGee for 99 years for the sake of building and operating the new factory. The UKS Borisov will provide the land plots for building and operating the internal and external engineering and transport infrastructure facilities.
The implementation of the decree is supposed to raise investments for creating an export-oriented enterprise with the output capacity of 120,000 cars per annum. The future enterprise is supposed to export 90% of the output. To operate at 100% capacity, the company will have to employ about 1,900 people. The implementation of the decree will also allow assimilating new technologies for manufacturing competitive vehicles.