"Cut with a hot iron": Lukashenko attacked private business

Tarasevich reported on the problems of the tax and pension systems, the pressure of officials on business, the bias of the control authorities. Moreover, her statements were correct and constructive; the director of the Business Union also proposed solutions to problems. But this, according to VTimes, did not help. Lukashenko attacked the entrepreneurs "with all the worker-peasant hatred".

The head of Belarus has always had a negative attitude towards businessmen, calling them “lousy fleas”. This time, he also did not avoid harsh phrases. For example: “Belarus is not Russia, the authorities will not kneel at the feet of business!”, “We will bring any self-employed entrepreneurs to senses!”, “I gave an order to stop this robbery with a trifling [declarative principle] business registration”, “We will cut you with a hot iron!"

Political analyst Valeriy Karbalevich noted that he had not heard such hatred directed on the private sector and rich people in general from Lukashenko's lips for a long time. This is explained by the fact that the President of Belarus considers businessmen to be the driving force behind the protests. “It looks like an element of a petty bourgeois revolution. We have got bourgeoisie, rich people, IT specialists, whom I created with these hands, providing them with conditions that are not provided anywhere else. And now these new categories have appeared, they live well in mansions, good houses. And what did they want? They wanted power”, - Lukashenko said in September last year.

Some business representatives see in such statements of the president a signal of a change in the economic course, characterize what is happening as an "atmosphere of pre-nationalization".

Moreover, Russian companies also suffer from this policy of the Belarusian authorities. For example, the Belarusian "daughter" of "Transneft" is "strangled" by taxes and inspections. The transit of Russian oil products through the territory of Belarus is carried out by UE Zapad - Transnefteprodukt. Now this enterprise, according to Igor Demin, Advisor to the President of Transneft, has serious problems: the growth of the tax burden and the activation of control and supervisory bodies create real prerequisites for the bankruptcy and subsequent nationalization of Zapad - Transnefteprodukt, the cost of which is estimated at about 6.7 billion rubles...

“It is predicted that under such conditions, capital flight from Belarus will accelerate. But not everyone will have time to leave. Political disloyalty will become a pretext that will be used to take away business, including from those who did not take any part in the protests”, - notes VTimes.