MINSK, 24 July (BelTA) – A package of documents on economic growth forecast in 2019 needs to be finalized by the end of August, Belarus' Prime Minister Andrei Kobyakov said during a meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers held on 24 July to examine Belarus' provisional social and economic forecast, monetary policy guidelines and main parameters of the national budget for 2019, BelTA learned from the website of the government.
Andrei Kobyakov noted that the government has been actively working on the draft documents for the past four months. “The documents are based on two scenarios depending on a variety of external and internal factors. The first one is the target scenario which serves as the linchpin for the draft forecast of social and economic development of Belarus. It is focused on achieving the goals set out in the social and economic development program for 2016-2020. When calculating the budget, we rely on the baseline scenario. This scenario envisages less favorable external economic environment in terms of prices and more moderate growth of our major trading partners. Being a country with an open economy, we need to take into account possible risks and plan our budget expenditures accordingly,” the prime minister said.
According to him, the draft documents envisage the most important social and economic development parameters, which will be the key performance indicators for the Belarusian government and the National Bank in 2019.
According to the head of government, the major task is to ensure balanced external accounts and to reduce the public debt. Other tasks are to reduce interregional differences in the level and quality of life of the population. To achieve the goal the government needs to continue working on creating high-performance jobs. It is also essential to significantly increase the competitiveness of goods and services on the international and domestic markets.
As for the fiscal policy, Andrei Kobyakov stated that the work on the new Tax Code is almost complete. Businessmen also took an active part in the development of the document.
