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«INFOFOCUS» bulletin No. 6 (183), 2017

E-bulletin of IISEPS Center for Documentation, No. 6, 2017 – ISSN 1822-5578
(only Russian)

Content

Introduction
1. Basic trends of June
2. Chronicle of key events
3. Politics
3.1. “I didn’t read your writings on physics”
3.2. Manual mode on
4. Economics
4.1. Artificial intelligence vs. natural intelligence
4.2. The Highest Sickness
4.3. Between quality and quantity
5. Finances
5.1. A record gone unnoticed
6. Our forecast for July
7. From the IISEPS desktop

Introduction:

Dear readers

As we expected it, favorable state of external affairs blunted the edge of economic problems. The growth of GDP over January-May exceeded the number for the period of January-April by mythical quanta of percent: 100.9% vs. 100.5%. This difference, which does not exceed the margin of statistical error, was enough for the heads of economic sector of government to submit victorious reports. As an example, let us mention the speech of First Deputy Prime Minister Vasily Matyushevsky during the “parliamentary hour” in the Oval Office. During this speech, Belarusian official declared that Belarusian economy returned to the path of growth. The very fact of changing paths buried the hopes of optimists to witness the promised show: the quarterly report of the government. That’s right: who conducts such large-scale events during the holiday season?

May was memorable due to high activity of Belarusian nemesis against officials. June justified our expectations regarding further ramp up of repressions, although not completely. Among the most publicized cases, let us note the suspension of the Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of Belarus Andrei Kovkhuto, and the arrest of Victor Puzikov, the owner of taxi service “Almaz”, which was accompanied by arrest of his $ 2 million property.

As for our optimism regarding the high chances of getting a credit from the IMF, it was not justified. The rejection of cheap money tied to liabilities in favor of expensive money without any obligations confirmed for another time that Alexander Lukashenko and Co. assess the probability of political threats higher than the probability of economic threats.

The most positive piece of news in June is the release of all persons involved in the case of “The White Legion”. In our forecast for June, we expressed hope that sporadic releases would turn into a stable trend. Today we are happy for those who didn’t back out and stood upon dignity when left one on one with “the state for the people”.

IISEPS board