Procedures of state registration and liquidation of economic entities will be simplified in Belarus as from January 1, 2008 in line with decree No 8 that the President of Belarus signed on December 17, the presidential press service told BelTA. In particular, state authorities will no longer be able to deny the registration of an economic entity. State authorities will no longer be responsible for auditing registration papers, but the economic entity will be responsible for the papers’ conformance with the legislation and their credibility of information. Apart from that, the registration papers will no longer have to list prospective business areas except for the licensed ones. It will be necessary to write down prospective business areas in the state registration application or to notify the registration and taxation authorities about such business areas before venturing into them. The decree also halves the minimum size of authorized funds of juridical persons and the subsidiary responsibility of members of additional responsibility societies. The number of papers necessary for state registration has been abridged. Procedures concerning decision-making for the state registration and entering an economic entity into the General National Register of Juridical Persons and Individual Entrepreneurs have been streamlined in order to cut down time costs and facilitate the registration process. The state registration term has been decreased from 20 to five working days.