Belarus Wants Other Strategy for Cooperation with World Bank

Belarus suggests discussing a new cooperation strategy to the World Bank (WB), Prime Minister of Belarus Mikhail Miasnikovich said at the meeting with World Bank Country Director for Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine Qimiao Fan on 11 July, BelTA reports.

The Prime Minister of Belarus suggested discussing the matters of common interest.

“I am interested in the new Belarus–WB strategy as the previous one expired in 2011. I think we could consider mechanisms, approaches and main points of our new strategy taking into account your report [country economy memorandum].”

He recalled his recent meeting with the IMF mission: “The head of the mission does not rule out developing an IMF program with Belarus. So we should work synchronously with the World Bank too”.

Mikhail Miasnikovich underscored that all reforms recommended by the World Bank, including structural ones, are carried out in Belarus taking into account the peculiarities of country’s market economy.

“For me as the Prime Minister economic growth is a top priority. In H1 2012 the GDP increased by 2.9% as against the same period of 2011 when we have an almost 11%,”

The PM also spoke on the issues brought up during the discussion of the WB country economy memorandum on 10 July. According to Mikhail Miasnikovich, the doubts expressed by some experts regarding Belarus’ economic development are not entirely unbiased.

Belarus’ industry is showing a good growth: in H1 2012 the growth stood at 8.5%. Growth in agriculture reached 5.1%, and export surged by 34.3%. Quality of the economy has also improved. Innovative products account for 17.4% of total output, and these are good figures, the PM reported.

“Real income went up by 3.3%, the tax burden has reduced. Taxes are down 2% as against 2011,”

Belarus has been a World Bank member for 20 years already. Since then the Bank has implemented 13 projects worth $900 million.

“The question arises as to whether we can do more. Of course we can. I suppose that your visit will help step up our cooperation. We are ready for a constructive dialogue,”

For his part, Qimiao Fan noted that for the 20 years of cooperation the WB has maintained a constructive dialogue with Belarus despite some ups and downs.

“I am glad that our support has helped Belarus improve living standards of people,”

As it was reported previously, the World Bank asserted that Belarusian economic growth model reached its limits and further development is not possible without sound economy reforms. However, Belarusian authorities are extremely reluctant to alter anything in country’s planned economy inherited from the USSR and almost completely based on cheap energy resources from Russia.

Deep structural reforms of Belarus’ economy are required by all world financial institution (such as the WB and the IMF) as the precondition for effective cooperation. Even the EurAsEC (de-facto ruled by Russia) refused to allocate its Anti-Crisis Fund loan until Belarus does not introduce innovations.

However, the visit of Vladimir Putin on May 31–June 1 by some miracle brought Belarus the third tranche of the EurAsEC loan, guarantees for tight cooperation and, of course, even bigger aversion for liberal reforms of any kind.

The WB representative noticed that, even receiving cheap Russian gas and oil, Belarus did not manage to take advantage of it and did not invest the money into modernization but simply spent it. However, Belarus still does not give up its attempts to receive as much loan money from as many loan sources as possible.

Read more:

World Bank: Belarusian Economic Growth Model Reached Its Limits

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