If you want to enter Belarusian market, be friends with Lukashenka
- 18.11.2008, 10:35
Friendly terms with friendship with Belarusian ruler and his administration are necessary for opening the way to the Belarusian market.
Israeli “Home Center” construction hypermarkets chain owned by Eliezer Fisher is going to approach the Belarusian market before the end of the year. The “Home Center” chain plans to start development of the Belarusian market with opening of two branches, in Minsk and in Vitsebsk. Considering a rather successful start of the business in the neighbouring Russia and friendship between the business magnate Eliezer Fishman and Belarusian leadership, entering the market of Belarus was just a question of time, Deutsche Welle informs.
Compliments and their price
Ahead of the beginning of the work in Belarus, Director-general of Fishman’s company in the CIS countries Eduard Prilepsky overwhelmed the local authorities with effusive compliments:
“Belarus is very attractive for our company. We see a huge growth potential here, even higher than in the neighbouring countries. There is a stable investment climate here. There is certain thaw in the legislation and state investment policy. We feel that. And it is one of the reasons why we have decided to enter Belarusian market, invest large sums,” he said.
Until now just a few representatives of Israeli business managed to open good relations with the Belarusian authorities and primarily with Alyaksandr Lukashenka. An exception is only “diamond king” Lev Levaev and Eliezer Fishman. According to Alexander Eterman, an influential economic observer, the two of Israeli business tycoons are unlikely to have extreme sympathy to Lukashenka’s system of management. The expert says that friendly contacts with Lukashenka and his administration are rather necessary for opening a way to the Belarusian market.
“Bureaucratic processes connected with approval of projects last for years and are very expensive. Someone should lift obstacles, if you want a project to be implemented. And it is twice as true when it concerns the country where the authority is extremely centralized,” Eterman said.
Plans and obstacles for their realization
And if after the meeting with the Belarusian ruler Lev Levaev couldn’t decide on a concrete project in Belarus, Fishman’s company has made clear promises to invest 1 billion dollars to Belarusian economy. Beside opening a chain of hypermarkets, the company plans to build a high technologies park and construction of an integrated house-building factory in Minsk. However, today Israeli analysts doubt that it is realistic to fulfill these promises. The last wave of the global financial crisis has delivered a hard blow on Israeli businessmen, in particular, Levaev and Fishman. In general, since the beginning of the crisis losses of the two businessmen were about 10 billion Euro and as noted by Alexander Eterman, a very serious question is raised today:
“Will they be able to meet their obligations? If they are building some thing in Belarus now, it is most likely connected with fulfillment of earlier obligations. Fishman do not have enough money for financing. He does not have his own means. Everything is blocked in connection with a sharp fall of their projects’ mortgage value. It is very hard to imagine for me that they would be able to mobilize considerable sums for the Belarusian project, even if it is very attractive,” the expert believes.