Expert: PM to be blamed for every failure
Belarus' Prime Minister is a likely scapegoat as the president is told the bad truth about machines and overloaded warehouses, pundits suggest.
Belarusians learnt about uncompetitive Belarusian products, MAZ trucks, tractors and other economic problems after a special meeting organized by the President.
Vice PM Pyotr Prakapovich told Alyaksandr Lukashenka the bald truth.
Pyotr Prakapovich: “Mr. President, we need to be realistic – we have no machine building plants that could compete with the world leaders in the industry. We need to invest billions and hundreds of billions to make it real.”
Does it mean that the President is finally being told the truth about the state of the country’s economy and everything that was said at the meeting is a sign of “the absence of control in the economy”?
“The economy is always uncontrollable. The economic terms are inexorable too: controlling the economy may yield good results for some time. However, the final results will always be bad,” financial analyst of Minsk Alpari’s partner Vadzim Iosub told Euroradio.
The Belarusian economy was announced to be the worse CIS economy in 2013, economist Leanid Zaika added. Speaking about the truth finally told to the state leader…
Leanid Zaika: “As far as I know, Lukashenka can read and write. Economists and specialists have been saying that 70% of our products are uncompetitive for a long time. He has finally been informed about it… What can be said? It is clear!”
Even high-ranking officials have finally admitted that it needs to be said, Vadzim Iosub agreed. PM Mihail Myasnikovich has been given carte blanche and can make any decisions to solve the problem now. But the mission is unenviable, Iosub thinks.
Vadzim Iosub: “The PM can be blamed for any failure now. I do not believe that he has any potential to solve this problem now.”
“It is necessary to change the existing model of the country’s economic development and the meeting testifies to the fact that they are looking for a solution now,” economist Pavel Daneika thinks. “But you need people, money, time and organizational decisions for it. And this configuration is always pretty much individual.”
Leanid Zaika suggested such an individual solution:
“If I were Mihail Myasnikovich, I would create a new government of creative and clever 35-40-year-old people. What would I do next? We would start working in a normal, professional way. I have been watching this child play in the economy for 20 years – I am bored!”
Do we need devaluation to try to unload the storehouses this way?
Pavel Daneika: “Devaluation without changing the economic model will be just devaluation: it will become easier for some time but everything will repeat later. That’s it.”
Some domestic products have 80% of imported parts in them, Iosub and Zaika added. It means that even devaluation may not lower the prices for Belarusian TV-sets and tractors much.
Our current economic problems “are the problems of the 1990s”, both Euroradio’s interlocutors noted. “Principal decisions” are needed to solve them now and our government is hardly able to make them. That is why telling the truth to the President is unlikely to be of any benefit.
Photo: http://reporter.by, Zmitser Lukashuk
