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«INFOFOCUS» bulletin No. 7 (184), 2017

E-bulletin of IISEPS Center for Documentation, No. 7, 2017 – ISSN 1822-5578
(only Russian)

Content

Introduction
1. Basic trends of July
2. Chronicle of key events
3. Politics
3.1. New concept
3.2. Conference for priorities in foreign affairs
4. Economics
4.1. Time to learn Chinese
4.2. Integrating with a reliable partner only
4.3. Belarusian export becomes cheaper
5. Finances
5.1. From triple- to double-fold growth
6. Our forecast for August
7. From the IISEPS desktop

Introduction:

Dear readers

As we suggested in June, Belstat put the fourth point above 100% on the graph “Gross domestic product production”: January-March – 100.4%; January-April – 100.6%; January-May – 101.0% and finally January-June – 101.0%. Nice trend of growth. First Deputy Prime Minister Vasily Matyushevsky declared its forming in June.

It is not very serious to make conclusions about the stoppage of negative trends in economy based on tenths of one percent. But Belarusian government has no other arguments to prove their professional competency. Our negative forecast remains in force; and our confidence is justified by the decrease of export efficiency.

Alexander Lukashenko can put under his belt the fact that the 26th Annual Session of OSCE Parliamentary Assembly was held in Minsk. European cop-out had an opportunity to feel himself as a world-scale politician, and he didn’t fail to use it, reminding for another time to the country and the whole world about his idea of organizing negotiation process similar to Helsinki. Naturally, the idea didn’t enjoy much support, since united Europe doesn’t regard Russia and Belarus as a worthy negotiation partner. Bipolar world order remains in the past, and by the way Alexander Lukashenko regularly says so himself.

As for Belarusians, the event with the difficult to remember name “The 26th Annual Session of OSCE Parliamentary Assembly” hardly impressed them: all this is too far from the mundane problems of common people.

We evaluated the probability of a “strict resolution about Belarus” as 50/50 with a possibility of separate harsh statements. And we were spot-on. Resolution with the criticism against Belarus was not included in the final declaration. A draft variant was included in the project of Minsk declaration; and caused a heated discussion among parliamentarians. The votes were split into two equal halves: 43 people against, 43 people for. According to regulations, resolution was not included in the final Minsk declaration.

IISEPS board