«

»

BULLETINS INFOFOCUS № 5

E-bulletin of IISEPS Center for Documentation, N 5, 2013 – ISSN 1822-5578 (only Russian)

Content:

Introduction
1. Basic trends of May
2. Chronicle of key events
3. Politics
3.1. Everybody, struggle against Corruption!
3.2. As the tree, so the fruit
4. Economics
4.1. State investment is inefficient even in China
4.2. Two weeks for a five-year program
4.3. Foggy Albion vanished in the fog
5. Finances
5.1. Between balance and imbalance
6. Our forecast for June

Introduction:

Dear readers!
Our forecast concerning a return to the policy of stimulating home demand begins to come true. In May National Bank lowered the refinancing rate from 27% to 25%, i.e. by 2% at once. Such swiftness has not been observed by it for quite a long while. A. Lukashenko’s charging the government with the assignment to prepare a decree whose purpose is unloading the stocks of Belarusian enterprises can be safely attributed to the home demand stimulating policy, too. As of May 1 the stock resources of enterprises made up almost 33.4 trillion rubles in monetary terms and had increased by more than 11 trillion rubles (over $ 1 billion) in comparison with the beginning of the year. However, regardless of how many paragraphs the future decree might contain, it is not difficult to guess that the government’s main suggestion will boil down to the domestic production distribution within the framework of leasing patterns. As an immediate action such suggestion will undoubtedly prove to be useful for certain enterprises, however no more than that. Who, for example, needs heavy vehicles in Belarus?
Our timid hope for a public flogging of the government did not come true. All May long members of the government had been exuding optimism with regard to meeting the annual macroeconomic indicators. To what extent the exuding was sincere is a separate question. As usual, no one ventured to rush into hell before one’s father. The “father” himself did not give occasion to panic, though. Let us confine ourselves to just one of his statements: “Not long ago I instructed a group of independent experts who know much about economy, not from the government, not from enterprises, to study the situation. A report was submitted to me, and I do not see a critical situation in it so far, with the exception of a couple of enterprises that should be brought to a decision”.
Minister of Economic Affairs N. Snopkov did not show initiative within the bounds of the tendency described above, either. Moreover, no traditional monthly document with an analysis of the most important parameters of the projected socio and economic development of the Republic of Belarus appeared in May on the website of the Ministry run by him. Apparently specialists of the country’s main economic headquarters had no time for an analysis in May.
Celebration of Victory Day did not go beyond the scope of the habitual scenario. Just as we had supposed, in his speech A. Lukashenko found cordial words towards the anti-Hitler coalition allies. However, the resolute reminder that “sovereign Belarus constantly finds itself at gunpoint of the undeclared cold war” did not leave any hopes that head of the Belarusian state would use the celebration of the victory over fascism as a means for mending fences with the West.
IISEPS executive board

Download full version (in Russian only)