E-bulletin of IISEPS Center for Documentation, No. 5, 2017 – ISSN 1822-5578
(only Russian)
Content
Introduction
1. Basic trends of March
2. Chronicle of key events
3. Politics
3.1. A civic-minded journalist and “Free Belarus”
3.2. “Non-cupidity” of a great state
4. Economics
4.1. Wait for the collapse
4.2. Trump didn’t live up to expectations
4.3. Disagreement over tenths of percent
5. Finances
5.1. “Superfluous” money amid credit deficit
6. Our forecast for June
7. From the IISEPS desktop
Introduction:
Dear readers
Not only young people have high hopes; hoar-headed analysts are inclined to it too. When we were preparing our May forecast, we still expected that we’d witness a government’s report on the results of the first quarter. Alexander Lukashenko was so convincing when he listed (according to a text prepared by speechwriters) all the participants of the forthcoming “analog of Central Commission Plenum”: deputies, senators, leadership of the National Bank and of the most important organizations and power verticals.
Quietly, May turned into June. The spring has passed; the summer has come. It’s possible that aforementioned representatives of All the President’s Men may bless themselves and thank the one who didn’t manage to fulfil his plan. It’s not the first time, and it’s not the last. Such is the strong leader of a strong state on the modern stage of its development. Everything is logical and consistent. The tactics of surviving “here and now” took over the strategic plans in economy and claims to “the great role of the spiritual leader of Eastern European civilization”.
Statistical numbers gained a few tenths over the quarter after being stimulated by a double-fold growth of prices on traditional export goods. Prime Minister Andrei Kobyakov publicly commented on economy recovery, and it was enough to forget about the government’s report.
Despite our expectations, calendar factor in April (three working days less than in April 2016) didn’t lead to a decrease of GDP. Apparently, aforementioned explosive export growth overcame the calendar factor.
On the 5th of June Ales Belyavskiy, a defendant in the case of “The White Legion” was released from the KGB remand prison; Sergey Kuntsevich was released on the 2nd of June; Evgeniy Poltorzhitskiy – on the 22nd of May; Nikolay Mikhalkov – on the 18th of May. As we expected, the case of “The White Legion” starts to fall apart. Unfortunately, this may last for a while.
IISEPS board