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Former finance minister and now Belarus’s new ambassador to Russia Yury Seliverstau said that joint projects with Russia for which a loan of 105 billion Russian rubles was allocated are being implemented slowly. He made the statement on Belarusian television.
“In my view, the pace of implementation of those projects that have already been signed is not very high. There are a number of reasons for this, including what might be called inflated expectations that we would be able to quickly form some kind of production site or cluster and acquire equipment, because it turned out not to be as simple as it seemed to our colleagues.
But the key issue here is that these projects must also be financially viable. Therefore, the experience of implementing these investment projects — for which the Russian Federation allocated about 105 billion Russian rubles — the path we have gone through, in my view, needs to be reassessed in order to understand which direction to move in.
Because yes, of course, for us as ordinary people and ordinary citizens, the more interesting joint projects there are, the better. But it is important to understand that a project must be quickly implementable and financially viable, because funds will be spent on it, including public funds. Even if these are loans, they still have to be repaid. If something then goes wrong, questions may arise. Therefore, we have no right, so to speak, to experiment with state money. And there is no time for that. That is why, from the perspective of further development prospects, I am confident that they exist. But we need to draw serious conclusions from the work we have done,” he said.
Seliverstau also stressed that agreements must be fulfilled.
“We must understand that our partners, when signing contracts with us and expecting to receive Belarusian products, refuse products from some other manufacturers in other countries, and in some cases possibly even from their own. They make their choice based on convenience, profitability, price, quality, and so on,” the ambassador explained. “But all of this can be crossed out if we do not deliver the products on time. Then they will have neither expensive nor cheap products, neither poor-quality nor high-quality ones. They will have none at all. We must not let our partners down under any circumstances. Therefore, of course, we need to monitor all these issues so that there are no force majeure situations. Because it does not reflect well on us when we take on obligations and are unable to fulfill them. No one will forgive us for that,” he said.
He also drew attention to the need to improve the quality of trade with Russia and other countries.
“We must understand that the issue is not only about money, but also about the volume of products sold and what kind of products we sell there, and what added value they have. Because spending a huge amount of resources to sell many cheap tractors and earning just a few kopecks on it is not our ultimate goal.
We must supply good, high-quality products with high margins. That is what drives the growth of trade turnover. And the most interesting thing is that this trade turnover generates more profit and budget revenues. Because, as you understand, you can sell bast shoes by the thousands, but that does not mean you will earn much from it. Conditionally speaking, of course. That is why trade turnover itself must also be assessed by some other factors,” Seliverstau said.