China-Belarus Industrial Park to decide on types of business activities by 1 November

By 1 November 2014 the administration of the China-Belarus industrial park Great Stone will determine the kinds of business activities in its territory. The relevant decision is laid down by the Council of Ministers’ executive order No. 956 of 9 October 2014, BelTA has learned.

Apart from that, by 1 November the park administration will work out and get approved by the government the procedure for submitting proposals to the Council of Ministers regarding the implementation of the park’s business guidelines and the volume of investments required for a corporation to get a registered as a park resident.

The executive order also approves the list of banks and other legal persons, which can hold pledges in the form of land plots and can rent land plots in the park if they sign credit agreements with the Belarusian-Chinese joint venture ZAO Industrial Park Development Company. The list includes the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China.

The document brings a number of executive orders of the Council of Ministers into compliance with Belarus president decree No. 326 of 30 June 2014. The decree stipulates measures to improve the performance of the park administration, allows the construction of facilities in the park alongside the development, examination, and approval of the necessary documents for every construction stage. These measures are designed to optimize investment costs at the initial stage of the park’s construction in addition to raising the funds necessary to create its infrastructure, securing relevant guarantees and confidence of potential investors.

The Council of Ministers’ executive order No. 956 of 9 October 2014 comes into force as of the official publication date.

The China-Belarus Industrial Park is a territorial unit with a special legal regime meant to enable comfortable conditions for doing business. The park’s foundation ceremony took place on 19 June 2014. The park’s concept provides for creating a convenient infrastructure for developing business, granting a considerable tax respite for participants of the project for a lengthy period of time, and providing a set of services to residents of the park. The priority business avenues of the park include the development of fine chemistry, biomedicine, electronics industry, mechanical engineering.

The park is located in Smolevichi District, Minsk Oblast 25km away from Minsk in the immediate proximity to an international airport, the railway network, and the transnational motorway Berlin-Moscow. There are plans to set up manufacturing and residential zones in the park, office premises, trade and entertainment ones, a financial center and an R&D center.