Law of the Republic of Belarus No. 345-З “On Public-Private Partnership” (came into force on July 2, 2016)

Introduction

In the early 1990s, the unfamiliar words “privatization”, “foreign investor”, “liberalization” gave rise to a premonition of a large property redistribution in Belarusian society, and the topic of ownership caused a feeling of embarrassment. The Belarusian society expected assistance from state bodies in overcoming the consequences of the introduction of market elements into the post-Soviet planned economy. As a result, the Belarusian authorities chose the following approach: at the transitional stage, the state should have 50% or 25% plus one share (blocking stake) or 10%, which gives it the right to appoint representatives to the management bodies of the joint-stock company.
Today, all significant privatization transactions in Belarus are subject to approval by state authorities, as a result, foreign investors are afraid of a conflict of interest with the state, and for Belarusian business, the closeness of privatization and its regulatory and bureaucratic nature make investing in domestic enterprises unattractive. Therefore, public-private partnership (PPP) was chosen as an alternative variant of privatization, which allows, without financial burden on the budget, at the expense of the investor, to build important infrastructure facilities while maintaining state property.
By the time of the adoption of the Law of the Republic of Belarus No. 345-З “On Public-Private Partnership” (came into force on July 2, 2016), the authorities had done a lot of work to form the institutional basis for PPP. Thus, in 2014, the PPP Center was established, in September 2016 it became part of the National Investment and Privatization Agency, the Interdepartmental Infrastructure Coordination Council (MIC) was formed, which included representatives of ministries, financial institutions, executive committees, public organizations, business -structures.

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