Banks pay 1.4 trillion rubles to the budget but keep the exchange fee

Belarusian banks paid 1 trillion 396 billion rubles of stock transactions tax to purchase currency at the stock exchange. The presidential decree 607 of December 20, 2014, introduced a 30% tax on stock transactions for purchase of foreign currency (later it was reduced first to 20% and then to 10%, and on January 8 it was canceled). This tax, which went into the budget, was paid at the stock exchange by the banks that bought foreign currency for their clients. During its existence - from 20 December 2014 to 8 January 2015 - the national budget received 1 trillion 396,3 billion rubles.

Individuals, as well as banks also paid the same fee when buying foreign currency from December 20, 2014 (Resolution 786 of the National Bank of December 19, 2014). According to the information from the Ministry of Finance which was later confirmed by the National Bank, banks kept this fee to compensate for the purchase of foreign currency at the exchange.

The 30% fee was originally planned to be in place from December 20 to February 1, 2015. According to Deputy Finance Minister Maxim Yermalovich, the budget was supposed to receive about 5 trillion rubles.

"The fee was supposed to be in place until February 1, 2015, Yermalovich said to the Belarus 1 TV channel on December 20. It's about 20 days of trading, with the daily demand and supply of foreign currency, earnings will be about 5 trillion rubles."