Siarhei Balykin: Socio-political potential of Belarusan small enterprises is overrated
Last week the United Civil Party came forth to the leaders of the Belarusan entrepreneurial community with suggestions to organize an area where an organization of small business could be formed.
According to Leu Margolin, deputy chairman of the United Civil Party, entrepreneurs don’t have such organization now, although “one hundred thousand individual entrepreneurs is a serious forth as it is”. EuroBelarus Information Service has asked Siarhei Balykin, the economist and the member of the United Civil Party how real is it to unite individual entrepreneurs on one platform and whether they need their own organization at all.
- I agree with Siarhei Balykin on the fact that small business doesn’t have competent experts and that they are disorganized. But I doubt in the ability of any political party to protect the rights of a numerous, though amorphous sector of small business involved in retail market. The suggestion made by the United Civil Party will hardly be of high demand and success. I think that social and political potential of Belarusan small enterprises is highly overrated. Market traders are people who are self-employed and they don’t see the point of investing their efforts, money and time into some projects which do not concern their momentary interests. There is no big problem in that, as if people found some employment and some earnings and are satisfied with such situation – it is their right; however, we can’t rely on retailers as social and political force. Besides, the United Civil Party can hardly offer something for the entrepreneurs except the office to hold press-conferences and round tables, as this political party practically doesn’t have any competent highly qualified experts, except economists. But mostly these are experts in macroeconomics, who can’t speak for the interests of small, medium-sized and large business properly. For these purposes we need specialists who can work with documentation, legislation, business and commercial law.
- But leaders of entrepreneurs say that they have enough victories in struggling against bureaucracy in their work history.
- If we look back in history and consider the efforts made to organize and structure entrepreneurial community, we’ll see that they proved to be unsuccessful. Despite all the statements, we never managed to achieve real victory. The leaders of entrepreneurs merely don’t have enough knowledge to descry the problem in tote and develop the possible solutions at every stage of development. Unfortunately, none of the entrepreneurial leaders managed to assert the rights of small business competently as well as judicially and economically reasonably. It is rather the problem of the entrepreneurs than their fault, as their movement doesn’t have any proper functionaries and qualified experts who are able to conduct a long and specific correspondence with the state and governing authorities up to the mark. Everything comes to the bursts of emotions which go down fast, whereas the state still achieves its goals.
- So you think that individual entrepreneurs are doomed to failure?
- Doomed are those individual entrepreneurs who will continue fulfilling their potential at markets and business centres, as they are no competitors to the large distribution networks. It is an open secret that hypermarkets already have lower prices than markets due to the large turnover of capital, which is something that individual entrepreneurs lack. On the other hand, hypermarkets are not able to cover all service industries and specialized goods. Individual entrepreneurs should offer the buyers and consumers something that large distribution networks cannot give; something more individual and exclusive.
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