Belarus' GDP 1.5% down in January due to cuts in Russian crude supplies

Belarus lost 1.5% of GDP due to the cuts in Russian crude oil supplies in January 2017, Prime Minister Andrei Kabyakou said on Tuesday at the meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, which discussed the results of the country's social and economic development in January 2017 as well as the measures to restore growth in the first quarter of the year.

"We are yet to get the result we wanted," Kabyakou is quoted by the state news agency BELTA as saying. The updated GDP numbers for January are 99.5% against January 2016 with the forecast approved by the government for the first quarter at 99.6%. We are 0.1% behind."

The prime minister said Belarus refined 0.8 million tons of crude oil less in January 2017 than in the same period last year. Industrial manufacturing lost 3.3% and the wholesales trade sector 4.5%. due to the cuts in oil deliveries. "If oil supplies remained at the last year's level, GDP would have been 101%," Andrei Kabyakou noted. He also stressed that the government had failed to compensate the losses due to "this crucial factor" in the first quarter of 2017, yet the work in this direction is under way.