BKDP leader Aliaksandr Yarashuk met with the IMF mission
On December 10, the DKDP leader Aliaksandr Yarashuk met online with a mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Belarus. For two hours, Aliaksandr Yarashuk told the members of the mission led by Check Guaye about the political and social and economic situation in the country and the forecasts of its development, as well as answered their questions.
The BKDP chairman focused on last year’s events in the country. He described them as a popular uprising against unprecedented fraudulent presidential elections and the ensuing brutal violence and repression by the losing ruling regime. This violence and repression also affected workers on strike, including members of independent trade unions, many of whom were prosecuted and fired.
The launched processes of reprisals continue today. Enterprises, organizations and institutions receive from the Committee for State Security so-called “black lists” indicating those workers who participated in protests, supported alternative presidential candidates and should be fired. The “witch hunt” does not bode well for the country and makes the already vague prospects of its social and economic development even more uncertain, Aliaksandr Yarashuk emphasized.
At the same time, Aliaksandr Yarashuk noted that it’s not about the expected imminent collapse of the Belarusian economy. Thanks to the favorable situation in the current year, the growth of industrial production, especially exports, and an increase in wages have been ensured. The rise in prices for potash fertilizers and petroleum products, Russian subsidies for energy resources make it possible to predict a relatively normal start of the coming 2022 in the social and economic field.
However, according to the BKDP chairman, there is no doubt that as time goes, the Belarusian economy, is unreformed, archaically controlled by command and administrative methods with total domination of the state, will plunge into a loss of competitiveness and become even more ineffective.
When answering the question about the economic sanctions imposed by the EU and the US against Belarus, Aliaksandr Yarashuk noted that he did not consider their influence to be critical. For two reasons. One is that there are loopholes for getting out of them, which is confirmed today by specific examples. The other is related to the support of Russia which is interested in minimizing Belarus’ losses from the sanctions and will do its best to contribute to this.
Aliaksandr Yarashuk mentioned the ambiguous attitude of independent trade unions to economic sanctions since they contradict the goals the achievement of which is the basis for the creation of trade unions and their activity. These goals are employment, maintaining jobs and creating new ones, ensuring decent wages. Sanctions threaten the achievement of these goals. As history has shown, the pressure of sanctions in itself does not ensure the fall of authoritarian and dictatorial political regimes.
No one has the slightest reason to make any long-term optimistic forecasts, the BKDP leader said when answering a question from the mission members about the government’s economic development programs. These programs should not be taken seriously since they are developed by those who resolve the momentary problem of survival based on the principle of “standing up for a day and holding on for a night”. The currently ruling political regime does not have any economic strategy.
So, there is no historical perspective, which was confirmed by the events of 2020 during which a new Belarus was born, the Belarusian nation was revived. And it is a matter of time when the revolution that took place in the minds of Belarusians will become reality, Aliaksandr Yarashuk said at the end of the meeting with the IMF mission.