12 thousand signatures collected against $100 exit duty
The petition is available online.
12500 people urge Alyaksandr Lukashenka and other state officials to cancel the order on the $100 duty for cross-border shopping travellers from Belarusians. The collection of signatures is ongoing.
Last week, Alyaksandr Lukashenka came up with the suggestion to take "$100 per person" from those who want to travel abroad for shopping.
"Those people who criticize us today, like, a poor country of beggars, take over three billion dollars abroad and bring stuff here, but we manufacture the same stuff here. So, I ordered: if you want to go abroad to buy something, pay the fee. It will look like this: you get services at the border, then pay $100 and go abroad," the Bealrus leader said.
On September 11, Deputy Prime Minister Pyotr Prakapovich confirmed it wasn't a joke, and that the exit duty might be introduced already in a month.
Pyotr Prakapovich: "We are studying the situation: the number of people that go abroad, whether they do it every day or every other day, with what aims. The situation is complicated. We took $ 3 billion to Lithuania-Poland last year. This doesn't mean we do not sell anything there - our people sell cigarettes and fuel there, earning at that market."
Prakapovich has noted in a conversation with Euroradio that the exit duty will concern re-sellers, not ordinary customers.
Pyotr Prakapovich: "Commercial structures rent whole buses to deliver the goods that they bought allegedly for themselves, but in the reality to re-sell to us. We should reveal this niche. The companies do not pay customs fees, or taxes - they practically dig into our pockets. This is the main task - to stop this. The border is controlled. If you go abroad fifty times a year and bring the fiftieth refrigerator or dress, it is clear you don't need fifty refrigerators or dresses."
Meanwhile, the UCP leader Anatol Lyabedzka announced start of the campaign against introduction of the exit duty. The initiators of the campaign will hold a press-conference in Minsk today.
Photo - ria.ru
