“Frankfurter Allgemeine”: Lukashenka started talks with “band of swindlers”
- 6.11.2008, 9:52
An article published in the German newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine” is dedicated to problems of Belarusian economy.
The events of the recent months have demonstrated that Alyaksandr Lukashenka reacts to changes of foreign political and internal economic conditions, reporter Michael Ludwig from the Frankfurter Allgemeine. Earlier when Vladimir Putin was Russian president, Lukashenka swore allegiance to Moscow in order to guarantee deliveries of Russian gas and oil at low prices, thus providing “achievements” of the Belarusian economy. Western observers have never believes this “achievements”, it was obvious for them that the economy of Belarus which is trying to combine centralized planning with isolated elements of the market economy, would get into difficulties sooner or later.
Doubts of the West have been confirmed by Russia, when it increased the gas and oil prices for Belarus in 2007 which forced Minsk to address Moscow with a request for stabilization loans. Now talks about granting a stabilization loan of 2 billion dollars and maintaining the gas price at the level of 128 dollars per thousand cubic metres are held again. It seems that the decision on granting the loan has been made by Moscow already, the newspaper writes, but they cannot reach an agreement on preserving the gas price. It is possible that the reason for difference of opinion lies in absence of agreement on the Caucasian question: Moscow demands Lukashenka to recognize independent of the breakaway Georgian provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but the Belarusian leader equivocates and plays for time in adopting the decision, in order not to do harm to careful rapprochement with Western Europe which is taking place over the last months.
Lukashenka is simultaneously carrying out talks on a loan with the International Monetary Fund. The sum of 2 billion is in question again. Many years ago the IMF stopped cooperation with Lukashenka because of his disinclination to implement market reforms, while in his turn he called the IMF “band of swindlers”. On the other hand, recently Lukashenka has made some concessions, which allowed some observers to speak about “tendencies of liberalization of the economy which could facilitate steps to meet Belarus for the IMF”. This is improvement of conditions for foreign investors, and adoption of the program of privatization, and strengthening of bank confidentiality.
However these measures are obviously not enough, which is confirmed by the growth of inflation and external debt, dwindle of currency reserves and volume of Belarusian export. Experts believe that drop of key indicators cannot be explained only be influence of the global financial crisis. The reason is rather in the mono-structure of the export, high energy expenses and insufficient competitiveness of Belarusian goods. However, the newspaper notes, “liberalization of the economy is dangerous for Lukashenka, as his control over the country is based primarily on almost total influence of the state on economy”.