August Newsletter Of Associated Office Of GRATA International In Belarus (Minsk) Arzinger&Partners

We present to your attention the last summer release of our Newsletter. We as always tried to provide you with the most interesting news of Belarusian legislation for the last month. In particular, you may learn about development of investment legislation and legislation on public-private partnership, plans of the Government for support of export in the next years, other news which, we hope, you will find interesting.

Note: Since August 17 the refunding rate of the National bank of the Republic of Belarus has been reduced to 18% per annum. Since September 1 legal entities and individual entrepreneurs perform obligatory sale of foreign currency in the domestic foreign exchange market in the amount of 20 percent of the amount of revenue in foreign currency.

PROCEDURE OF CONCLUSION, AMENDING AND TERMINATION OF INVESTMENT AGREEMENTS

Sergey Mashonsky Senior Partner

On July 28 the Resolution of the Council of Ministers No. 563 came into force in the Republic of Belarus . This document establishes a new procedure of conclusion, amending and termination of investment agreements and provides the following updates.

Requirements to investors

Now the investor who intends to conclude an investment agreement with the Republic of Belarus and is going to use privileges provided by the Decree No. 10 will be obliged to enclose to application, in addition, copies of the documents containing assessment of financial state of the investor namely:

an audit opinion (for legal entities - residents of Belarus), or the report by results of carrying out of a financial Due Diligence, or an audit opinion of the international standard ISA 700 with a translation into Belarusian or Russian (for legal entities - nonresidents of the Republic of Belarus, foreign companies which aren't legal entities). The accounting period for these documents constitutes, as a general rule, two years prior to registration of an application on conclusion of investment agreement with the Republic of Belarus. For investor (investors) existing less than two years reporting period is a period of activity.

Besides, the investor needs to attach copies of the documents confirming his capability to invest in the declared amount, including:

bank balance statement on the bank account or letters of banks and (or) other documents (in case of their availability) confirming intentions of creditors (banks), other persons to provide assets for performance of an investment project by means of credits, loans, with indication of approximate amounts of assets and conditions of granting thereof. New conditions of land plots tender

The decree No. 8 which came into force on May 15, 2016 and amended and added the Decree No. 10 prescribed the procedure of competitive selection of the investor in case there are two and more investors applying for performance of the investment project on the same land plot. According to this document in case in term of 30 calendar days starting from the date of registration of application on conclusion of investment agreement there are other applications regarding the same land plot received by state bodies or executive committee a tender for choice of the investor (investors) shall be...