E-bulletin of IISEPS Center for Documentation, N 4, 2014 - ISSN 1822-5578 (only Russian)
Content:
Introduction
1. Basic trends of April
2. Chronicle of key events
3. Politics
3.1. Facing the internal market
3.2. "Rough and tough, but fair decree"
4. Economics
4.1. Sanctions "without insignia"
4.2. Russia at the cusp of de-dollarization of economy
4.3. Belarusian variant of "nationalization of elites"
5. Finances
5.1. "Disbalance scales are getting close to pre-crisis figures in 2011"
6. Our forecast for May
7. From the IISEPS desktop
Introduction:
Dear readers!
As we supposed, despite the numerous "last Chinese warnings" from the head of state, following the results of the first quarter government was not dismissed. To be fair it should be noted that the GDP, the main economical index, after the January-February decrease, managed to grow by 0.5%. But the subject of government dismissal became somehow outdated even before the publication of quarter statistics.
Our prediction on Message-2014 was fully confirmed as well. The main hit of the previous year (modernization) lost its popularity. Neither people, nor deputies of the National Assembly heard the analysis of reasons for the disruption of plans on state enterprises' modernization. In full concordance with our predictions the key word of this year turned out to be the word "corruption". It was mentioned 32 times in the text of the Message (in 2013 the word "modernization" was mentioned 49 times).
Interdepartmental working group's active work on agro-industry reformation was to end with a "plenum" (the first "plenum" on building industry was held in December 2013). But the "plenum" wasn't held. As we had supposed, President's Administration spent all its creative and organizational potential on preparing the Message. Administrative Bolivar could not carry double of such large-scale projects, that is why the topic of reformation of agro-industry was not discussed in state mass media in April. An "extensive anti-corruption report", which A. Lukashenko asked to prepare on the 28th of March, didn't happen in April as well. It is not improbable that it was sacrificed to Message-2014 as well.
The "small victorious war" between Russian and Georgia, or more specifically its coverage in Russian mass media, caused and effect of mobilization in Belarusian society. In this connection we were waiting for another mobilization effect caused by the annexation of Crimea. Unfortunately, our expectations came true. A. Lukashenko's rating and social indices grew in March in comparison with December, and this happened despite the growth of negative trends in economy.
IISEPS executive board
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