OREANDA-NEWS. August 26, 2010. President Alexander Lukashenko met with the Chairman of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus, Vladimir Andreichenko, to receive his report.

The Head of State has been updated on the preparations currently underway for the fifth extraordinary session of the House of Representatives. According to Vladimir Andreichenko, the deputies will peruse and discuss a number of key pieces of legislation that are expected to contribute to the nation’s prosperity in 2011.

One of the items on the agenda is the draft national budget for the year 2011. The budget is socially-oriented. Significant funs will be allocated for increasing salaries, pensions, student allowances; the draft budget provides for more than a 30 per cent increase in health care spending; more funds are planned to be channelled into refurbishing and re-equipping institutions of education.

The lower house of parliament will also consider changes to the tax legislation as part of the effort to simplify the national tax system and ease the tax burden on businesses. Next year it is planned to abolish the services tax and infrastructure development fee, revise the coefficients relating to the rates of land tax, property tax, and simplify the VAT and profit tax payment procedures.

The purpose of all this is to make Belarus more attractive for foreign investors and fuel the growth of private business inside the country.

During the meeting the two also touched upon the preparations underway for the sixth session of the House of Representatives due to open on October 4. The deputies will consider 49 bills. The most important of them are the Education Code, Housing Code, the law on the proposals, requests and complaints from citizens and businesses, and a range of other bills.

In November the House of Representatives will hold parliamentary hearings on the bill of state innovation policy, which the Head of State ordered to draw up in his Address to the Belarusian People and the Parliament.

The two also discussed some other issues, for example the House of Representative’s international activity and the work carried out by the deputies in their election districts.