Belarus needs $1.4 bln in foreign investment

On September 17-20, Minsk hosted the Belarusian Industrial and Investment Forum. The National Agency for Investment and Privatization (NAIP) had prepared an atlas of investment projects, which included about 50 projects with a total need for investment of about $1.4 billion.

According to the representative of NAIP Artsyom Shkryl, the projects relate to mechanical engineering, metalworking, instrumentation, textile and food industries, chemistry and petrochemistry, reports belmarket.by.

But where will Belarus take so much investment and what is the situation with foreign direct investment in general? Euroradio spoke about it with Dzmitry Kruk, senior researcher of the Center for Economic Research at BEROC.

According to the expert, for many years at least 80% of the FDI inflow (except for large transactions, such as the sale of Beltransgaz or Velcom) has been made up of reinvested income: foreign companies operating in Belarus reinvest profits in our country. "In other words, a significant part of what is reflected in the statistics as FDI in Belarus de facto does not leave the borders of our country and is not a new capital raised from outside," said Dzmitry Kruk.

According to him, the part of the funds which is really invested from abroad is so small that it can often be almost directly linked to specific projects and investments reported in the media. And FDI attracted in Belarus correlates with investment into fixed assets.

According to the Ministry of Economy, Belarus attracted $11 billion of foreign investment in 2018, of which $1.6 billion came on a net basis.