IISEPS — Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Politycal Studies

E-bulletin of IISEPS Center for Documentation, N 11, 2014 - ISSN 1822-5578 (only Russian)

Content:

Introduction
1. Basic trends of November
2. Chronicle of key events
3. Politics
     3.1. "Paint everyone with the same brush"
     3.2. Another trade "war" between Belarus and Russia
4. Economics
     4.1. Benefit performance of Saudi Arabia
     4.2. Made in Russia
     4.3. Where are fundamental stockpiles buried?
5. Finances
     5.1. Topicality of Belarusian ruble devaluation substantially increased
6. Our forecast for December
7. From the IISEPS desktop

Introduction: Dear readers!

Government prepared a budget for 2015 in November, and on the 1st of December A. Lukashenko approved it without any discussion in the Parliament. There were no surprises. In 2015 real household disposable income of population will grow by 1.1-1.5% in comparison with the current year level. This is the main macroeconomic parameter of the special op "Presidential elections 2015". If we judge by the dynamics of events in Russia, Belarusian powers don't have very much prospect to execute it; but this is a problem of the future, even though this future is quite close. But today all efforts are devoted to searching stockpiles; however, barns and storehouses of "Belarusian model of economic development" are empty. Thus it is important to work out some non-traditional ways of budget replenishment. Fight against welfarism is one example of innovational efforts of the power. Which result will it have? We are going to see it very soon.
As we've supposed, while preparing the budget, no one, either in President's Administration or in the Government, didn't remember power's obligations to the people, which were taken on the IV All Belarusian People's Assembly. There is nothing surprising about it. Belarusian model of a "strong state" never expressed inclinations to be responsible for committed actions; all the more there is no reason to expect it under the consequences of exacerbated struggle for maintaining stability.
The process of archaization is widening in full concordance with our forecast. Power has no other ways to stimulate economic growth. We cannot but recollect a quote from Vladimir Vysotsky's song: "No miracles except for punchfest".
National Bank didn't go in for a rapid devaluation of Belarusian ruble in November. Probably they've taken into account our forecast. But the objective reason for the rapid devaluation (the ruble crash in Russia) didn't go away. According to the information, made public by First Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Leonid Marinich, Belarusian agribusiness had already lost $ 160 million because of the devaluation of Russian ruble. And this had happened before OPEC countries refused to cut down the allowable production, which gave another impetus to the weakening of Russian ruble.

IISEPS executive board

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