MINSK, 22 June (BelTA) – Lower production costs and better product quality are needed if we want to win the growing competition on the Russian market, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said at the 5th Belarusian People's Congress on 22 June, BelTA has learned.
“We should understand: growing competition on the Russian market is not a temporary event. It is to stay for long. How can we respond to it? Only by reducing costs and improving the quality of products,” said the head of state.
In his words, Belarus has not yet achieved big successes on new markets. “We can lose our traditional markets (first of all Russia) if we continue working like this,” the Belarusian leader warned.
In his words, production costs in plant industry and cattle breeding in Belarus are 1.5 times higher than in Europe. “This is the result of idleness, theft, poor labor discipline and lack of innovations,” Alexander Lukashenko said.
The President named agriculture as the most important sector, with the local authorities bearing direct responsibility for it. According to the President, a lot of problems have accumulated in the area today. “Huge resources have been invested in the sector. Not a single former Soviet Union country has ever injected so much money in agriculture as Belarus. We have invested more than $50 billion in rural modernization in recent years. We have considerably ramped up the agrarian output. However, the situation with sales and profitability is still far from being perfect,” Alexander Lukashenko stressed.
The Belarusian leader is confident that the financial recovery efforts in the sector should be continued. “If a company cannot meet its obligations, it should be replaced by a new one. It is a natural process,” the President said stressing the need to learn to operate on a self-financing principle.
