OREANDA-NEWS On 06 October was announced, that Belarusian Finance Ministry plans to increase the value-added tax rate to 20% from 18% in 2010. This information said Finance Minister Andrei Kharkovets during presentation of draft budget for 2010.

Commenting on the peculiarities of the draft consolidated budget for 2010, the minister said the document included a package of tax measures, which will “cut budget resources by 2.3 trillion Belarusian rubles (Br).”

“To compensate, it is planned to raise the value-added tax rate to 20% from 18%, which will result in additional 1.4 trillion rubles of budget revenues,” Kharkovets said.

As a result, the reduction in budget revenues will reach 0.9 trillion rubles, or 0.6% of GDP.