Lukashenka Killing Small Shops In Regions

Here are some concrete examples.

Inspecting Balbasava, Lukashenka stood up for small convenience stores, Solidarity writes:

- I would not recommend you to build chain stores here, because they will kill small ones. We have 11 such, one might say, at a walking distance. They compete with each other. And if now some chain store appears here, it will be able to cut prices by half, and thus will kill these (small shops), and then it will raise prices again.

Caring for small businesses, especially in a region that has turned out to be “ashes and ruins”, is welcome. If it were not for a number of circumstances, forcing to doubt the sincerity of what was said in Balbasava.

First, it is worth recalling that it was Lukashenka, by his decree #297 “On conducting an experiment,” allowed the creation of stores in the Vorsha district, despite the existing anti-monopoly barrier of 20%. This restriction did not come out of nothing: a few years ago, the expansion of Euroopt and Dobronom caused concern to the owners of small regional chains and stores, who secured the emergence of a draft law on state regulation of trade and public catering facilities.

Secondly, a year ago, Lukashenka ordered the owner of the Korona hypermarket chain, Pavel Topuzidis, to build a chain of grocery stores in the village so that they could compete with the state-owned Belkoopsoyuz:

- We need competition so that we see the real picture. So I asked you to plan such a service network in one of the regions of Belarus.

It is curious that by that time construction of the Korona shopping center had begun in Shklou, which in record time opened across the road from the local ice hockey palace. Next to several shops within walking distance, by the way.

And this year Topuzidis opened a store in Kopys. Side by side with Euroopt, one of the three stores of this network, which opened this year in the village. All three stores operate in the premises rented from a local raipo, and all three are within walking distance of each other. In total, in the Vorsha district, Euroopt rents more than 30 stores from the state trade.