The first Central Asian Legal Service Cooperation and Exchange Forum

On October, 26th Anna Soltanowich, a lawyer of SBH Law Offices "Banking and Finance" direction, was a speaker at the forum "The first Central Asian Legal Service Cooperation and Exchange Forum" with the topic of the report "Preferences for implementation of investment projects in Belarus for foreign residents".

The presentation outlined general provisions with respect to investment activities in Belarus and their legal basis. The focus of the presentation was on existing legal approaches to the variety of opportunities available to foreign investors in Belarus. 

Special attention was given to three aspects:

1. Special legal regime of the China-Belarus “Great Stone” Industrial Park.
2. Special legal regime of the High Tech Park.
3. Implementation of investment projects within investment agreements concluded with the Republic of Belarus.

Creation of the “Great Stone” Industrial park was aimed at development of such areas of economy as machine manufacturing, biotechnologies, pharmaceuticals, fine chemistry, new materials, etc.

Residents of the “Great Stone” are granted a number of tax and customs preferences, such as:

• Tax preferences with relation to salaries;
• Exemption from customs duties and VAT;
• Exemption from a number of corporate taxes for established periods of activity.

In order to register as an industrial park resident the investor needs to register a legal entity in Belarus within the territory of the park and develop an investment project with the volume of investments of at least $0.5 million.
 
High Tech Park is one of the largest IT-clusters in Europe and it constitutes a special extraterritorial legal regime, which is directed at the development of IT-sector of economy. Legal basis for HTP regime is the Decree of the President of the Republic of Belarus N 8 “On development of digital economy”.

Within the second section of the presentation the discussion was about certain preferences and benefits for the HTP residents, requirements to the companies wishing to obtain an HTP resident status, as well as opportunity to carry out innovative types of activities by HTP residents, for example, carrying out transactions with tokens (cryptocurrency) in blockchain system.
 
Within the third section of the presentation the questions for discussion concerned implementation of investment projects in Belarus via conclusion of investment agreements between foreign investors and the Republic of Belarus.