Yuri Chebotar
MINSK, 21 August (BelTA) – Belarusian Economy Minister Yuri Chebotar talked to reporters before a session of the Council of Ministers on 21 August and sketched out plans for the year 2025, BelTA has learned.
Yuri Chebotar said: “Today we are looking into the main parameters of our country’s development next year. We proceed primarily from evaluations of external and internal factors. We assume that we need to grow faster than the world. Our main partners intend to achieve growth rates of 103-104% next year. We actually intend to achieve a gross domestic product growth rate higher than that next year.” The Belarusian economy is expected to grow by 4.1% in 2025.
This figure is supposed to be reached by putting efforts into three main areas: a manufacturing program, an export program, and an investment program.
“As part of the manufacturing program together with all the ministries and industry-specific concerns we have determined plans concerning over 40 commodity items. Including the realization of these plans in the shape of concrete future contracts and export shipments. Export is supposed to grow by slightly more than 5% next year. We’ve also determined the main markets: our main trade partners are Russia, China, and the Asian market as a whole, other remote countries. We understand what shipments we need to deliver, how much, and within what timeframe. Together with our colleagues from economy branches we constantly monitor the confirmation rate of export contracts. It is rather high in most of the economy branches. Every quarter of the year we look into what other contracts are available in the near future. We are persistent in realizing the agreements reached at the top level. The penetration of new markets of faraway countries is in the center of attention,” the economy minister noted.
The investment program is of particular importance. “It has been on our agenda for years. The development of enterprises, the quality of products, the competitive ability, the creation of new manufacturing facilities depend on investments. We intend to raise investments by over 7%. The realization of investment projects is the key. We’ve prepared more than 600 together with regions. Our initiative ‘One district – one project’ is relevant. The regions add to it all the time. We pay attention to the development of the leisure industry. We’ve started working on projects in the regions in order to not only create a manufacturing base but also infrastructure for tourism. We’ve already added three projects and two more are in the pipeline. I hope we will pick up the pace because this industry has a lot of opportunities for growth,” the official stressed.
As far as an increase in investments is concerned, Belarus counts on all sources – internal ones and external ones. “Certainly, we pay more attention to domestic investors and count on our own resources. We are stepping up interaction with our main partners: China, Russia. We are working out projects together with them. The corresponding concepts are available,” Yuri Chebotar clarified.
In his words, personal incomes will grow depending on the workforce productivity. Wages and pensions are scheduled to rise in 2025. “We keep inflation under 5% in order to increase incomes fast,” the minister concluded.