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BULLETINS INFOFOCUS № 8

E-bulletin of IISEPS Center for Documentation, N 8, 2012 – ISSN 1822-5578 (only Russian)

Content:

Introduction
1. Basic trends of August
2. Chronicle of key events
3. Politics
3.1. “There can be no casual people here”
3.2. Stepping over the milk pipe-line
3.3. Reforms or death
4. Economics
4.1. Who hopes for what
4.2. Ideology as an economic growth driver
4.3. Twice as little, but twice as much!
5. Finances
5.1. From the life of vast monetary aggregates
6. Our forecast for September
7. From the IISEPS desktop

Introduction:

Dear readers!

 

Belstat published the latest data reflecting the wage-push dynamics on July 24. During July it had grown by another 200 thousand rubles which constituted $ 452 in dollar terms. Thus the struggle for keeping the head’s of state electoral rating continued. However, the regular rise of the first class wage rate planned for August 1 had to be postponed till September. One can’t bite off more than one can chew. One has to take into consideration the economic reality whether one wants it or not; although the problem of the current events perception by the top leaders of the country is still urgent which was confirmed by A. Lukashenko’s speech made on July 2 at the grand meeting devoted to Independence Day. The “strong state” remains the only miracle cure for external and internal challenges for the Belarusian authorities. And this is in spite of the country economy memorandum for the Republic of Belarus “Economic transformation for growth” prepared by the World Bank with the participation of the government and the National Bank. The main idea of the multipage document is as follows: “the Belarusian development model” based on state ownership dominance has exhausted its potential. A. Lukashenko’s speeches, however, are prepared in the Executive Office of the President, not in the government. Perhaps, the complete discord of the two most important July documents can be accounted for by the above mentioned fact.
Predicting the course of election campaigns in Belarus may be the simplest task possible. On July 9 the process of forming the district election committees composed of 9-13 people was completed. Out of 199 representatives nominated by the opposition parties 48 people (24%) were included into the committees. For comparison: the pro-power-holding Republican social organization “Belaya Rus” nominated 117 citizens; and 106 (90.5%) out of them became members of the committees. Everything is “in full compliance with the Constitution” – who would ever doubt it!

IISEPS executive board

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