Belarus’ PM urges radical changes to simplify construction procedures

The agenda of the meeting of the Council of Ministers Presidium topped the issue of the effectiveness of the use of innovation funds in 2023, and also measures to simplify the construction process in the country.

“The second issue is quite acute. The head of state has instructed to take measures aimed at simplification of the construction process with a gradual reduction of the number of mandatory requirements in the area, to ensure their simplicity and uniformity,” Roman Golovchenko said.

According to the prime minister, a lot of work was done in 2022 and 2023. “The Code on Architectural, Urban Planning and Construction Activities has been adopted in Belarus. The document will come into force in July 2024. It introduces a number of innovations aimed at optimizing the requirements to the facility construction process. A number of individual decisions have been taken to simplify the procedure for the construction of structures of the fifth class of complexity, as well as for the demolition of buildings,” the head of government said.
 
According to Roman Golovchenko, the corresponding work continues in 2024. On 15 March the government considered the proposals prepared by the Construction and Architecture Ministry, the essence of which is to change the approaches to control the construction process in respect of facilities of the fourth and fifth classes of complexity.

“In order to reduce the number of administrative procedures by combining them, a proposal has been made to establish a parallel construction, energy, environmental, sanitary expertise as a comprehensive assessment of project documentation,” the prime minister said. “In general, following lengthy debates, these approaches were approved at the previous meeting. However, certain concerns among government bodies began to emerge later.”

Roman Golovchenko stressed that the Construction and Architecture Ministry has also prepared proposals to simplify the procedure of connecting individual residential buildings to engineering networks. There are a number of disagreements regarding these proposals as well.

“Thus, we have decided to consider this issue at a meeting of the Council of Ministers Presidium and make a well-founded decision on the projects prepared by the Construction and Architecture Ministry. But this is only a part of the existing issues. Today the construction process represent a large number of procedures involving the interaction of developers with government agencies and organizations at all stages:from the development of pre-project documentation to the commissioning of the facility. This implies the need to obtain a lot of approvals and conclusions in various instances, and leads to a significant increase in the construction period,” the prime minister said.

The issues of granting land plots for construction are regulated by separate laws, but have a direct impact on the construction process, Roman Golovchenko added. “Any building, if we can put it this way, makes part of a particular land plot. Optimizing time spent on addressing land issues will also help reduce time of construction,” he stressed.

According to the head of government, it is necessary to adopt a package of decisions to further simplify the construction process and increase the responsibility of all the stakeholders. “The head of state is waiting from us fundamental changes to the current system,” Roman Golovchenko said.