Our forecast of inflation rate acceleration can be neither confirmed nor refuted so far. The August data had not arrived yet while the issue was being made ready. In July the index of consumer prices made up 100.3%, and a year before - 100.4%. However, if we refer to the rubric "Chronicle of the main events", then we will see that among the main events of August three are directly connected with the rise in prices. In particular, it was announced in August that postal and telecommunications services would go up from September, 1; alcohol excise duties would increase and suppliers would buy meat for a more expensive price. According to the data of Belstat, the cost of potatoes rose by 35.2% in the first half year, of sugar - by 29.5%, of petrol - by 21.5%, of vegetables - by 19.3%, of butter - by 15.1%, of tea - by 11.6%, of alcoholic beverages - by 10.2%, of medicine - by 15.7%, of municipal carriage of passengers - by 14.2%. In Russia the prices are growing considerably ahead of the last year's schedule, thus our forecast concerning inflation acceleration is, unfortunately, going to come true.
As for the reduction of the GDP growth rate in the third quarter, our forecast is not confirmed so far. The GDP has grown by 6.6% for the first half a year, and by 7% - for the period between January and July. During a meeting with the head of state conducted at the end of August prime minister S. Sidorsky once again gave his assurance that the yearly GDP growth task (111-113%) would be carried out. Even China does not demonstrate such growth today; however, the ability of the Belarusian statistics to interpret the information from the field in a creative manner increases considerably in the year of presidential elections.
The Belarusian-Russian information "war" became the top topic of news agencies in August. Only the anomalously hot weather could contend with it as far as the popularity level was concerned. Just as we had supposed, at the beginning of the month attempts to put an end to sorting things out with the help of TV were made on the Belarusian part. However, the information confrontation recommenced with the amplitude unprecedented for the Belarusian-Russian relations after the two "Molotov cocktails" on the night of August, 30.
On the other hand, the issue of selling Iran two Belarusian air-defense systems S-300 was not continued in August. Correspondingly, no reason for another crisis in Belarusian-American relations came into existence.

IISEPS executive board

Complete version see Here »»

Back   Top