More effort to upgrade Belarusian enterprises to substitute imports, export more

MINSK, 11 September (BelTA) – More effort should be put into modernizing Belarusian enterprises for the sake of manufacturing import substitutes and exporting more products. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko made the statement as he heard out a report from the government and the National Bank on 11 September 2012. The report covered the national economy performance in 2012, assessment of this year’s results and the next year’s draft development forecast, the draft state budget, and the draft monetary management policy.

The head of state stressed: “I’ve given instructions to finish all the organizational work required for complex modernization of state-run enterprises. Every head of a company should have a modernization plan aimed at manufacturing competitive products that will primarily substitute imports and will be exported. It is the most important thing”.

“[President Aide Piotr] Prokopovich has been returned to active duty at the top level and he has been entrusted with the task. It is his prime task. He has to examine modernization aspects of each and every enterprise, verify the availability of a concrete plan aimed at manufacturing top level products. This is my instruction to him, it has been forwarded to the government,” remarked Alexander Lukashenko. “If we fail to upgrade our enterprises, fail to start manufacturing modern products, there is no place for us here. By 2015 we must reach at least $60,000 in proceeds per employee. It is a concrete indicator. You cannot play with it.”

The head of state remarked that the policy “money for a breakthrough project” is being implemented these days. “A project should pay for itself, it should be oriented into the future. Only for this project will foreigners give money and will we find money inside the country. Nobody will give us anything for nothing,” stressed the Belarusian leader.

Alexander Lukashenko remarked that he was seriously concerned that the export growth rate of automobiles, agricultural machines, household appliances, metallurgy and woodworking products is either falling or has slowed down. Many branches of the production sector still have problems with overstocked finished goods inventories. No considerable improvement regarding payments in the economy has been registered. “Since the beginning of the year overdue accounts receivable have gone up by 30%, with overdue accounts payable up by 32.5%. It is considerably higher than the inflation rate in this period,” stated Alexander Lukashenko. “The main debtors are still economic entities in the Russian Federation. Besides, the overdue debts of the Russians have surpassed the debts of Belarusian enterprises [to Russian partners] two times over. It is abnormal that we, who have considerably less financial resources than Russia does, credit economic operations of our partners. By the way, we are doing it not only in the Russian Federation”.

Alexander Lukashenko underlined that the lack of own resources and high borrowing costs slow down investment efforts. He said the situation in the regions was alarming: “I have to admit that the governors fail to pay attention to the development of the real sector. Investment efforts are weak”. For instance, only Vitebsk Oblast and Minsk Oblast have managed to hit the targeted gross regional product growth. Vitebsk Oblast did it primarily thanks to the petrochemical industry.

“Virtually all the regions are slowed down by the civil engineering industry. It seems that in previous years our ministers and governors got accustomed to only spending the budget appropriations. Where is your concrete work?” asked the President. Alexander Lukashenko pointed out problems in the animal husbandry industry. Cattle sale for slaughter tends to fall.

“We need complex development of territories, including the industry and the services sphere. Neither the government nor the governors should hide behind the lack of money. Chinese loans alone have made over $8 billion available to us. But the borrowed resources will naturally be channeled only in cutting-edge projects,” said the President.