Privatization

Belarusians have become less interested in the pro-European vector of development as the influence of Russia in the country grows. Belarusian analysts hope that Stefen Fulle's European Dialogue on Modernisation with Belarus will soon become meaningful and that the EU will focus more on working with the people, and not only respond to the actions of the illegitimate Belarusian authorities...

The Ambassadors of Poland, Lithuania and Sweden have returned to Minsk and their colleagues are on the way to the Belarusian capital. It seems that EU-Belarus relations have broken the deadlock, but they remain difficult and the EU has few carrots to offer its restive authoritarian neighbour. Unlike countries like Moldova and Armenia, Belarus is increasingly integrating into the Eurasian...

On 20 January 2012, the authorities approved a new strategy to attract foreign direct investments. This document can be regarded as a new invitation for foreign business with advanced technologies to take part in privatization in Belarus. The authorities hope that Western businesses will come despite the country's poor human rights record and their failure to release all political...

In 2009-2010 the Russian government refused several times to transfer loans to Belarus when it failed to fulfill certain conditions. Then Putin insisted on the sales of Belarusian industrial enterprises to Russian companies. The Minister of Finance of Russia Aleksei Kudrin urged the Belarusian party to provide guarantees for loan repayment in the form of a program of selling the Belarusian...

The year of 2011 was in many respects a unique year for Belarus. Unlike a regular year, it started not on 1 January but rather on 19 December of the previous year. On that day the presidential election took place and in the evening a huge crowd of protesters gathered in the center of Minsk. The police violently dispersed the crowd. Hundreds of the protesters were arrested, including 7...

On 16 December two Belarusian citizens were added to the EU visa ban list, and EU assets of three companies associated with the Belarusian regime were frozen. The European Union continues to impose different sanctions on Belarus at the request of human rights activists. However, this policy fails to provide the EU with additional leverage in the country.

Today the EU can neither offer...

Auctioning of government property, a familiar debate about the extent of Lukashenka’s domestic legitimacy, and a few sensationalist words about life inside a police state: a round-up of Western coverage of Belarus over the last month.

Selling off the state. The Belarusian Central Bank’s auctioning of office supplies and furniture has drawn the most interest...

If Russia does not increase the amount of subsidies to Belarus, Lukashenka will have to accept the proposals of the Ministry of Economy and the National Bank: to privatize (or rather, to carry out the nomenklatura privatization of) one third of the state-owned enterprises and to cut government expenditure significantly. This would mean a reduction in the scope of state regulation of the...

Yesterday the Belarusian government concluded an investment agreement with the British company GMC Global Energy plc owned by Russian oligarch Mikhail Gutseriev. Gutseriev, who fled Russia in 2007 and currently lives in the United Kingdom, has undertaken to build a major potash-extraction enterprise in Belarus.

The new enterprise will inevitably compete with...

The development of the crisis in Belarus has slowed down and the macroeconomic situation has been temporarily balanced. The state program of privatization struggles to achieve its goals because of the lack of buyers but the foreign trade balance is improving because Belarusian goods are relatively cheap. The government failed to adopt market rate for foreign currency exchange despite calls...

Last week Russian Minister of Finance Kudrin warned that Russia would reconsider any further loans if Belarus government continues to preserve multiplicity of exchange rates, restrict import and delay privatization.   Over the last months  all efforts of Belarus government focused on...

Several months into the grave economic and social crisis the Belarusian opposition seems to be concerned only about two problems: how to achieve the release of political prisoners and how to keep their offices. The economic crisis, the impoverishment of the people and the cheap sale of the state property are largerly ignored. The opposition leaders do not use these issues to mobilize the...