Leanid Zaika: “Billions borrowed by Belarusian authorities are to be over in July”
- 21.04.2009, 10:16
Independent analysts believe that the Belarusians do not understand graveness of the economic crisis.
“Belarusians are hypnotized by TV, and they are sure that they are living in a problem-free country,” said the head of “Strategy” centre, economist Leanid Zaika in an interview to “Zavtra tvoej strany”.
As said by him, Belarusians do not believe that the crisis is sure to hit on everyone.
“They think that annual 8 billion dollars received from Russia as concealed subsidies are money deserved by them. But Ukrainians and Russians understand that they can rely only on themselves, and nobody would help them,” Leanid Zaika says.
“Where our enterprises could get profits from, when Belarusian goods export has dropped by 45%? When billions borrow by Belarus would finish, then people are to see that in reality they have no money,” the head of the “Strategy” analytical centre is convinced.
An economist Mikhail Zalesski agrees with Leanid Zaika. However, he believes that “the fact that so little Belarusians are economizing today, could be explained not only by the economic situation, but by traditions as well”.
He notes that “three strategies of a household budget exist: to spend less, to restructure expenditures (let’s say, more food less cars) and a search for new ways of income acquisition”. “It is possible that many people use other ways of survival,” Mikhail Zalesski believes.
We can return to the situation of the middle of the 1990ies.
Not just some enterprises, but entire branches of industry have become loss-making. Since the beginning of the year in five branches of industry have a minus profitability of goods sold, “Belorusskiye novosti” inform.
They include microbiological industry, pulp and paper industry, meat and dairy industries. In February glass, porcelain and faience industry and timber industry joined them. The worst profitability is in dairy and meat industry, minus 5.2%. According to the results of the six months of the last year this industry had the opposite result, plus 5.5%. However in December this figure dropped almost to zero (0.6%).
According to the Belarusian Statistics Ministry, a number of industries work with a low profitability: tractor and agriculture engineering industry (7%), flour-and-cereals industry (5%), automobile industry (4.6%), chemical (4.1%) and textile industry (4%).
Profitability of the industry in general has dropped more than twice in two months, to 7.2% as compared to 17.3% in January-February 2008.
According to L. Zaika, it is no wonder. “One shouldn’t expect miracles. That shows that the economic crisis is starting for us. Those who haven’t adopted themselves to the new conditions, who haven’t cut working force, salaries, volumes of production, are to work at a loss,” the economist underlined.
The economist believes that this figure is underestimated. “Factory managers conceal part of their expenses. But this all is to surface by the middle of the year, when they would have to disburse funds under loans,” he noted. Summing up the results of the first half a year, the expert forecasts 45% of loss-making enterprises.
He does not exclude that we could return to the situation of the mid 1990ies when the number of loss-making enterprises in certain regions (Minsk and Vitsebsk) exceeded 55%.
The ratio of warehouse stock to the average month volume of production has grown from 61.1% in December 2008 to 91.8% in March 2009.