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«INFOFOCUS» bulletin N 5 (171), 2016

E-bulletin of IISEPS Center for Documentation, N 5, 2016 – ISSN 1822-5578
(only Russian)

Content:

Introduction
1. Basic trends of May
2. Chronicle of key events
3. Politics
3.1. What is profitable is legitimate
3.2. Yo-mobil technology for € 1
4. Economics
4.1. Negative interest rates become fashionable
4.2. There’s just no money. Hang on in there
4.3. Belarusian model organizes all-round defense
5. Finances
5.1. Commercial banks: only problematic actives grow fast
6. Our forecast for May
7. From the IISEPS desktop

Introduction:

Dear readers!

Campaign aimed at organizing the 5th All-Belarusian People’s Assembly started on May 3. According to the head of state, “There is going to be a serious discussion on problem questions. Those questions are not simple.” Taking into account the poor state of Belarusian economy, it is true that there is quite a number of problem and difficult questions. However, it is hard to believe in a serious discussion. At least in May we couldn’t find even the timidest attempts to discuss the sore points in state mass media. Let us take “Soviet Belrussia” as an example. Editorial stuff of “the most solid newspaper” didn’t publish a single debatable material related to the planned People’s Assembly.

It doesn’t mean that there were no materials on this seemingly important topic. But materials that were published resemble reports of stagnant Soviet times. Just one example: “Chairman of Rosson district executive committee Alexander Shubskiy believes that as of late their district made a solid step forward in its development. 11 years in a row before 2008 no flat buildings were built in the region. However, since 2008, we have built five five-storey buildings. This helps us to provide doctors and teachers with housing.”

As we’ve supposed it, candidate nomination for the 5th All-Belarusian People’s Assembly was carried on “democratically as always”. Mechanism of selecting the worthiest worked without a single malfunction. To be fair, it should be noted that not the worthiest didn’t make any attempt to pass through the administrative sieve this time.

In the course of May, the price of Brent oil was oscillating around $ 50 dollars for a barrel. However, our forecast on a relative weakening of the Belarusian ruble came true. The weakening wasn’t disastrous, however over the last month of Spring Belarusian ruble lost 2.9% relatively to the US dollar.

April activity of Lidia Yermoshina, the chairwoman of the Central Election Committee, destined to increase political culture in Belarus, was converted into real suggestions. In particular, now at least one side of the table, where the voting papers are counted, should be in the field of vision of observers. Revolution character of this suggestion will be estimated by the participants of elections in September. However, just as we expected it, this and other suggestions for increasing political culture did not contribute to appearance of “different point of view” in state mass media.

 

IISEPS executive board