Belarus: A New Country in Eastern Europe
Выдавец: Тэхналогія
Памер: 72с.
Мінск 1994
Belarusan power stations which work mainly on heavy fuel or natural gas produced in 1990 nearly 40 billion kilowatt-hours of electric power. In 1990 Belarus also imported nearly 9 billion kilowatt-hours for the complete provision of its needs. In 1993 the electric power production dropped to 33 billion kilowatt-hours and import to 6 billion kilowatt-hours. The drop in power production and import is also connected with the sharp price rise of imported power resources. The sharp rise in oil price is explained by imposing high export duty on crude oil by Russia — 30 ecu. So Belarusan consumers paid for the oil twice as much as their Russian counterparts, which influenced greatly the competive-ness of Belarusan's goods. On that account one can say that in 1993 Belarus suffered a "power shock" similar to that in Western Europe in 1973-1974.
Besides electric power heat plants and power stations produce about 100 million gigacalories of heat used for industrial purposes and house heating. Since Belarus has a rather long and cold winter the drop in beat production can be allowed only after taking large-scale measures on introduction of power-saving technologies and energy-saving household devices. After the Chernobyl disaster all the work in the field of nuclear power engineering in Belarus was stopped. Now Belarusan industry feels great need for economical spending of power resources. The Belarusan government started seriously to solve the problem of energy saving. According to the data provided by Belarusan and Western European experts, in the nearest future it is possible to drop the power consumption by 20% which could save on the import over 1 billion USD a year. With a possible export of 3-4 billion USD a year this will be a great relief for Belarusan economy. It is worth mentioning that the cost price of 1 kWh of electric power in Belarus is near 0.05 USD, 1 gigacalory of heat — 5 USD.
According to the new political and economic status of Belarus the Supreme Soviet and the government started to introduce economic reforms on liberalization and structural reconstruction of the economy. After transformation of the former USSR into several independent states the unitary economic system turned into international economic system.
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As has been actually mentioned, in the Soviet times in Belarus there was mainly concentrated processing, assembling oil and chemistry, science capacious industries while the power and raw materials base was mainly in Russia. After the USSR's disintegration most power and material consuming branches in Belarus became dependent on the deliveries and orders from their partners in different CIS countries. Now the Belarusan government as well as other CIS governments faces the problem of the renewal of finance and economic integration, the creation of a common market for their producers. Unfortunately the acceptable integration forms built on equal partnership of all the CIS countries have not yet been found.
From 1990 in Belarusan economy there started to develop free-market relations. Denationalization and privatization of state industrial enterprises is one of the main aims of the Belarusan government. The Supreme Soviet of Belarus has adopted privatization laws and approved the programme of privatization of the state property. In the near future there is expected a drop of state property in the industry to 40%. In 1990 state-owned enterprises constituted almost 100%. The most popular privatization form is the creation of stock holding companies on the basis of the former state enterprises. The state enterprises privatization is conducted in two stages. The first one is the privatization in exchange for privatization vouchers which are given to all Belarusan citizens as the right to a share of the state property. The second stage is the privatization through auctions. The first stage began on the 1st of July 1994.
The second important trend in the work of the Supreme Soviet and of the government of Belarus in the area of economic reforms is the creation of favorable conditions for foreign investments. To that end, the Supreme Soviet has adopted the law on foreign investments which guarantees privilege conditions for foreign investors. According to this law it is very easy now to create joint ventures in Belarus, to open companies with a 100% foreign capital. These enterprises are to have a 100% tax holiday for the first three years of their work and they can transfer their profits abroad without any limitations.
Alongside the energy problems Belarus' economy has a number of other difficulties, connected mainly with the creation of a new political and economic status and with the beginning of the economic reforms.
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Politically Belarus has become a new independent state in Eastern Europe. Economically it should conduct its own independent economic policy not counting on the help of a "rich Uncle" from abroad.
As a result of several objective and subjective reasons there's now a drop in the volume of production and a high inflation rate in Belarus. All that is connected with the transfer from the administrative economic system to the market economy, with the conservatism of the Belarusan government, which in its majority consists of the old system specialists, and with the lack of normal economic relations between CIS countries as well as the lack of such relations with developed European, Asian and American countries.
The overall production volume in 1993 as compared with 1992 dropped in Belarus by 15%. It should be noted that this is the best result in the CIS. According to the Belarusan government this is the utmost result that can be reached in the present economic conditions. The production drop can be explained as a reaction to external factors, an attempt of the economic structures to adapt to the new conditions, which is impossible without losses. If we exclude from the production volume oil processing and some other power and material consumption industries and also enterprises that undergo conversion then the production drop will constitute only 6-8 %.
The drop in agriculture in 1993 was by 17% as compared with 1992. This drop was due to the changes in the structure of agriculture and to the agricultural goods prices, lack of power and fuel and of course to the slow-down of land reforms coupled with economic changes in agroindustrial complex. Now practically all the land formally belongs to the state, though the real land owners are kolkhozes and local authorities.
The Supreme Soviet has adopted a law "On the Land Property" which makes it possible to give land to private owners. But the right to private land property is still limited. For example, Belarusan citizens have the right to buy land into private property to build houses or produce agricultural goods but they cannot buy land for the construction of industrial enterprises. The laws on land property for the construction of industrial enterprises, administrative, cultural and othet buildings are to be adopted by the Supreme Soviet in the near future.
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It is natural that the state of economy should influence the Belarusan people well-being. The Belarusan GNP in relative prices dropped by 22% from 1991 till 1993, which worsened the financial state of the country and of the people, limited the possibilities of investments and slowed down the fulfillment of social programmes. In 1993 GNP in Belarus was 8.9 trillion Belarusan roubles.
In 1992 the revenue of the budget was 37% (41 % in 1991) of GNP. The lessening of production volume is mainly caused by the delay in money transfer for goods delivered to other CIS countries and first of all to Russia. In spite of the high inflation rate and the changes in the budget caused by it, the main proportions and ratios in the budget remain unchanged. The Supreme Soviet approved the state budget for 1994 with the 6% deficit though the credit part of it is 20% higher.
So Belarusan economy, if we view it on a macrolevel, is relatively stable: now it can sustain the necessary proportions between the produced and spent GNP. That makes its functioning acceptable in the present conditions. In any case the purposeful state programme which is now being realized by the Belarusan government should reveal the main causes of the crisis and then remove them.
It should be noted that great damage to Belarusan economy was caused by the so called Agreement on the union of monetary systems of Belarus and Russia signed by the countries' Prime Ministers on the 8th of September 1993. In ten months after the document was signed the Belarusan rouble dropped against the US dollar by 1000% while the Russian rouble only by 350 %. After signing this Agreement and later on the Treaty on the monetary systems union including the conditions of the existence of the joint monetary system, also signed by Belarus' and Russia's Prime Ministers on the 12th of April 1994, the monetary policy of Belarus is now not controlled by the Supreme Soviet which leads to grave financial problems in Belarus.
In the privatization programme adopted by the Supreme Soviet it is not only proposed to liquidate the state monopoly on the property rights but also to change the industrial relations as well as mass psychology. It is no secret that ideological organs of the Communist party had always cultivated the psychology of the universal equality. It was assumed that everyone should work according to his abilities and get paid according to
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his needs. But the reality was far from this, quite the other way round. The person who achieved an outstanding financial success was usually condemned by ideological and law-enforcing organs. The vast majority of people could be either state employees or employed by state enterprises or offices. Therefore they depended upon the state's favors. As the Communist party had constantly tried to separate the person from property, now there is the opposite aim — to inculcate the sense of property, to create a man of property. Until this has been done, the process of economic reforms in Belarus will be slowed down because of the conservatism of mass psychology.
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