2 October, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA/. Small enterprises and individual entrepreneurs created 88.9% of the total number of jobs in Vitebsk in January-August, the Economy Department of the Vitebsk City Executive Committee informed a BELTA correspondent. The City Executive Committee notes the active development of entrepreneurial initiative in the regional centre. Thus, over 8 months of the current year, 392 legal entities and over 1.2 thousand individual entrepreneurs have been registered, which is 0.6% and 14.7% more, respectively, than in the same period of 2011. The main types of activities of newly registered enterprises include wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, construction, passenger and freight transport, and the provision of various services. In January-August, private entities opened 45 new shops with a retail area of over 27 thousand sq.m and 11 catering facilities with five hundred seats in Vitebsk. New manufacturing enterprises have been registered: for bottling mineral water and soft drinks, for processing and preserving fruits and vegetables, and for manufacturing metal building products and structures. As of 1 September, 14.2 thousand economic entities operate in the non-state sector of the regional centre's economy, including 10.3 thousand individual entrepreneurs and 3.5 thousand small enterprises. This sector employs 16.4% of the city's working-age population. -0-

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