Coronavirus officially closed over 400 businesses in Kosovo

White has sold generators for renewable energy production, mainly in countries in Europe.

He tells Radio Free Europe that he was not helped by the state and was forced to fire workers and stop business.

“generators producing wind energy, renewable energy is called. Even here with Kosovo businesses we've worked, but with more internationals, Switzerland, Germany, Bulgaria... I've had 10 of them, under normal announced conditions. When we had a lot of work, we got 20 or 22 workers a day, paid them hours or days. Depending on the orders we had”, says White.

The same business in Kosovo has suffered hundreds more. From March, when the first cases of Corleone were confirmed by August 24th, 447 businesses have been closed in Kosovo.

The type of businesses that have been closed are trade in large numbers and retail, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles.

But, Kosovo Business Agency Chairman Agim Sahini tells Radio Free Europe that the number of closed businesses is about 5 thousand.

“Based on information that we possess across the country, about 5 thousand businesses may have been shut down from the pandemic, which a number of them have bankrupted, a number of them have laid off the activity and waited for good days and a number of them have been extinguished”, Sahin says.

Valentina Bytyci of the Kosovo Tax Administration tells Radio Free Europe that the number of business closure requirements differs from the number of deregistered businesses.

It shows procedures on how a business in Kosovo should be closed.

“Declaration of all periods, failure to keep untainted obligations in ATK from the taxpayer, as well as verification on the ground to see if the business in question has closed its activity and is not operating. When all these procedures are carried out, the taxpayer receives the certificate that has closed his activity and then is unregistered at ARBK”, Bytyci says.

At the last session, held on August 14th (Friday) Kosovo's Assembly has not approved the draft economic recovery law.

The bill is designed to help businesses through fiscal and monetary policies after losses caused by the coronary pandemic.

In addition, opportunities are provided for the contributors to Kosovo's budget to attract 10 per cent of the pension savings to the Kosovo Pension Savings Fund, and the transfer of 100m euros from the Kosovar Privatisation Agency to use for the country's economic recovery, to have credit to businesses with more favourable conditions, as well as a reduction in the 18 per cent Value Value Tax rate, as it currently is, to eight per cent for hotels and gastronom.

With the adoption of this law, Pakos' implementation for economic recovery is enabled, amounting to 385m euros.

According to the chairman of the Kosovo Economic Ode, Berat Rukiqi, if this situation continues by the end of the year, thousands of businesses will be closed.

In the hope that there will be support, many hard businesses have delayed their activity. If such support is delayed, then quite a large number, thousands of businesses will not be able to wait for the spring of 2021”, Rukiqi says.

Otherwise, this law will remain in force until December 31st, 2021. After that date, all provisions of this law will be automatically abolished.