Former EPAM manager: 40% of startups are leaving Belarus
Former top manager of EPAM Maksim Bahratsou / Euroradio
About 40% of startups are in the process of complete exit from Belarus. Ex-Vice-President of EPAM, and now a member of the Coordinating Council Maksim Bahratsou said on the air of the Present Time TV channel.
“We judge by the sector I know well - this is telecommunications and information technology. In September the growth by inertia was 9.1%. In October, there was 1.9% GDP growth. This is one of two industries that provide some kind of GDP growth. The rest of the industries, they do not show GDP growth at all. The IT industry is one of those industries that has grown. It is still showing growth. And at the end of the year it shows growth, in my opinion, of about 7.5%. But you can see how the dynamics change very sharply, how fast the growth rate fell in just one month”.
Maksim Bahratsou believes that this shows a loss of trust: “when there is no basic security, then neither the population, which withdraws money from bank accounts, nor institutional investors, like the EBRD, nor any other investors who can invest domestically show trust”.
Everyone is in the same mood, the expert sums up.
