Minister: Belarus' financial and forex markets steady in 2022

MINSK, 10 March (BelTA) - The government and local authorities have made every effort to neutralize the impact of external pressure, Belarusian Economy Minister Aleksandr Chervyakov told reporters, BelTA has learned.

"2022 has certainly been a challenging year. The unprecedented sanctions that were taken against our country did affect the development of the economy. The head of state set two specific, clear tasks: to keep the economy and enterprises going and to shield households against the pain of sanctions. I believe that the government and local authorities did their jobs well," Aleksandr Chervyakov noted.

First, the financial health of organizations has improved, the minister noted. "Profitability was 8% in 2022. This is the maximum in the last 10 years. Secondly, the number of loss-making enterprises has decreased. The debt burden has gone down. The government purposefully worked on increasing incomes of households throughout the past year. Wages in December recovered to the level of previous year. Moreover, it even grew by 0.6 percentage points. It's a real wage. In December, real pensions rose by 9%. The pension averages Br670. In fact, in December we brought real incomes of people closer to the level of previous year," he stressed. “I would like to note that last year we received a record high surplus in foreign trade of $4.3 billion. This helped us to keep the financial and forex markets steady.”

"You know that after the first sanctions, the Belarusian economy was predicted to shrink by at least 20%. In fact the decline was 4.7%. This suggests that the government and local authorities have made every effort to neutralize the impact of external pressure," Aleksandr Chervyakov stated.