Belarus’s Minister of Agriculture and Food Yury Horlau, speaking at the congress of the Russian dairy union Soyuzmoloko, rejected accusations that Belarusian producers are engaging in dumping on the Russian market. The allegations have recently emerged in connection with the situation on the butter market.
“As for the sale of butter, dear colleagues, indeed, such a situation has developed — unfortunately, it has developed worldwide. We know there is overproduction of fats. There are butter stocks in warehouses in the Russian Federation, and there are butter stocks in the Republic of Belarus as well.
How should we solve this problem? Indeed, we must solve it together, because solving it alone would be extremely difficult and, probably, not in a partner-like manner toward each other. But you must know that the Republic of Belarus has never engaged in dumping, because I often hear from our Russian colleagues, perhaps from some of you in the hall, that the Republic of Belarus is dumping.
We know what dumping is: it is the sale of products below cost. We do not sell our products below cost — we sell them at a profit,” he said.
According to him, in 2025 the average profitability of milk production across the country was 26 percent, while processing profitability stood at 11 percent.
Yury Horlau also said Belarus is ready to move to free pricing for raw milk. According to him, so-called indicative prices are currently set based on price proposals from producers who analyze domestic and foreign markets. These are then submitted to a commission at the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.
“We formalize the proposals that come from our enterprises today. Believe me, there is absolutely no pressure to deliberately work somewhere to reduce prices. We try to do this, and we do it within the market,” he said.
He noted that a proposal is being considered to abandon indicative prices.
“I think this is a matter of a short time — to move away from indicatives and work at market prices, as the Russian Federation works today. I said today from this rostrum that we are ready to work in the same way as Russia does, so that there are no questions that we are regulating prices somewhere. The question is: are you ready for this?” he said.
It should be noted that Belarusian officials have periodically made similar statements before.