MINSK, 6 October (BelTA) – The government expects the indicators of real wages in the country to increase by December, First Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Snopkov said at a government meeting hosted by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko to discuss economic matters in Minsk on 6 October, BelTA has learned.
First Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Snopkov expressed an ambiguous point of view that inflation always accompanies economic growth. According to him, over the past 10 years (from 2012 to 2021), the average inflation rate was 11%. At the same time, the average annual economic growth was only 0.7%. Earlier, in the period from 2002 to 2011, the inflation was above 20%, real GDP growth was 7.5%, real wage growth - 10.3%. "The main task is economic growth. This is even more important than inflation spikes," Nikolai Snopkov said. According to him, the increase in prices for 75% of goods, which are goods of daily consumer demand, is less than 10%. "We really did try to restrain the inflation," the first deputy prime minister added. However, he acknowledged that not all reserves were used.
The president believes that inflation should not necessarily accompany economic growth: why do we need economic growth that leads to the impoverishment of people? Especially in a situation when there is no growth of salaries and income. Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed that the current growth of prices in the country was unreasonable in many cases and there were reserves to prevent it.
“We have stopped the decline in household incomes. Keeping in mind the tasks we have set for all government agencies, we can see that in December we will reach the real wage growth. There are reserves for that,” said Nikolai Snopkov.
According to the first deputy prime minister, one of the factors affecting the increase in the cost of goods is the openness of the Belarusian economy and the disparity of prices: many producers want to export goods to Russia where prices are higher.
The head of state reasonably remarked that the government should act in the interests of its own people. “You are the first deputy prime minister in Belarus, not in Russia. You need to feed the Belarusian people first. We have everything for that if we speak about our agriculture and farmers,” he said.
