On 1 February Belarus will raise tariffs for the transit of Russian oil via pipelines crossing its territory by 6.7 per cent. Transit constitutes an important source of revenue for the country, while control of pipeline routes also gives...
On 4 May 2017 Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenka declared that Belarus plans to gain approximately $50bn in exports off goods produced in the Great Stone industrial park. Meanwhile, on 3 April 2017, Moscow and Minsk resolved all their disputes in...
As of 26 December 2016, the oil and gas dispute between Belarus and Russia remains unresolved. Moreover, Russia persistently rejects any tradeoffs: this deprives Belarus of a substantial part its foreign exchange earnings from petroleum product sales, thus aggravating the...
On 17 October 2016, new macroeconomic data from Belstat, Belarus's national statistical committee, indicated that this year's economic decline seems to have finally halted. The GDP stopped falling and foreign trade saw a slight revival. However, on 21 September the...
Economic difficulties push Belarusian authorities to extraordinary ways of gathering revenues. They continue arrests of top businessmen, regardless of their position in Lukashenka's apparatus, on tax evasion charges, allegedly waiting for a big payoff. In domestic politics, the authorities try...
At the end of 2015 Belarus published a new energy security concept according to which it remains a country with a critical level of energy dependence. 90 per cent of Belarusian energy imports come from a single supplier – Russia....
Traditionally, Belarusians celebrated Christmas as a part of Kaliady – a two week long pagan holiday of winter solstice. However, today most Belarusians celebrate New Year's Eve as their main winter holiday. This tradition comes from Soviet times, when communists rejected...
While all eyes focus on Ukraine deeply stuck at crossroads choosing a proper direction, Eastern and Western donors zealously compete in Belarusian energy sector. In early November, the World Bank offered a $90m loan for the reconstruction of several Belarusian...
