The reduction of permits will allow entrepreneurs to save almost 500 million tenge this year

As you know, in March of this year, the head of state signed the Law "On introducing amendments and addenda to some legislative acts of Kazakhstan on reduction of permits and simplification of licensing procedures".

This law was developed with the direct participation of the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs "Atameken".

As it was reported by the director of the department of public monitoring work and work of administrative barriers NCE RK Erbol Ustemirov, the law aims to reduce the permits, to simplify the rules, which have a negative impact on business development and improvement of Kazakhstan's positions in “Doing Business”. "The main purpose of the law is to reduce the administrative burden on business by eliminating duplicate and unnecessary permissions, their transfer to notification procedure and optimization of licensing procedures", - he explained.

What benefits does the new law promise to entrepreneurs? As it was noted by the representative of NCE, primarily administrative barriers will be eliminated.

"153 permits were reduced with the adoption of the law in Kazakhstan. The reduction of licensing procedures will reduce the burden on businesses in areas such as construction, land use, agriculture, financial services, transportation", - said Erbol Ustemirov.

For example, the following procedures will be reduced such as granting consent for the implementation of other activities by the subject of natural monopoly; registration as an individual entrepreneur; a license to collect, to store, to process and to sell scrap and waste of ferrous and non-ferrous metals by legal entities; issuance of international technical inspection certificates; issuance of permits for placement of outdoor (visual) advertising on vehicles and other.

"Due to the fact that there will be reduced significantly the number of permits and simplified the procedure for their issuance, it will entail decrease of financial costs for business: in 2016 to 467mln 633.2 thousand tenge, 500 358.3 thousand tenge in 2017; 535 383.5 thousand tenge in 2018", - said the director of the department of NCE, referring to the data of the Republican Budget Commission.

The adoption of the law will simplify the rules, which have a negative impact on business development. For example, obtaining of land plots. "Prior to the adoption of the law the employees of local executive bodies had the opportunity to refuse to grant the land in the absence of detailed design estimate documentation. At the same time some individuals obtained land plots in the absence of or non-compliance of the design estimate documentation. These facts were detected during the prosecutorial investigation initiated by NCE in the Akimats of Karaganda, Balkhash, EKR, SKR ", - said Ustemirov.

As an example, he named the akimat of Karaganda, which during 2013-2014 out of 121 land plots provided 90 in the absence or non-compliance of the design estimate documentation, only on the basis of preliminary designs.

According to the representative of "Atameken", the adopted amendments to the Land Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan provide for the elimination of the above-mentioned administrative barriers for obtaining land.

"Changes made to minimize the risks of corruption by the local executive bodies and allow entrepreneurs to receive or to use the necessary land plots for the construction. Thus, even in the absence of approved design estimate documentation the entrepreneurs will receive land plots in accordance with the general plan of any settlement", - concluded Erbol Ustemirov. The adoption of the Law helped to resolve many contentious issues related to advertising. In particular, the problem of different interpretation of reference of certain objects to the advertising objects. "The norm was introduced to the law, according to which, signs are not advertising for all businesses", - said the representative of NCE.

There were introduced amendments to eliminate some defects and collisions. In particular, we are talking about the legislative gaps in the field of advertising, due to which in Kazakhstan were lots of litigations, concerning the charge for placement of placards on the territory of the gas station. According to the owners of the gas stations, the information boards at the gas station are not considered as an advertisement, but only a requirement, that was established by the tax authorities, and therefore entrepreneurs don’t have to fulfill them. Legal disputes arose on this occasion many times, which entrepreneurs managed to win sometimes. Now, according to the law the information boards at the gas stations are not considered as an advertisement.

The law provides for the improvement of Kazakhstan's positions in the ranking  “Doing Business”. "In order to improve the "Taxation" indicator, there were introduced changes to the Tax Code providing for reduction of VAT refund from 180 days to 155 days. In order to create favorable conditions for the provision of public services for the registration of real property rights, there were accepted norms to reduce the time for all kinds of registration from 5 to 3 business days. In addition, the amendment provides refines e-registration for a period of 1 working day, "- said Erbol Ustemirov. He also added that there was adopted an amendment, which envisages improvement of Kazakhstan’s position by the following indicators "Resolution of Insolvency", "Getting a loan" and "Protection of minority investors".