Opposition experts to present economic reform program to government
The Public Consultative Council at the Office of the President of Belarus will gather for a meeting in the last days of March. Uladzimir Makei, the head of the presidential administration, has not set an exact date yet, but the topic of the meeting is already known: “Developing New Approaches in the Implementation of the Country’s Economic Strategy in the Conditions of the Global Financial Crisis”.
The European Radio for Belarus has learned that an alternative report with the proposals from the pro-democratic part of the council was drafted by former Central Bank chairman Stanislau Bahdankevich and Strategy think tank director Leanid Zaika. The ex-chief banker will voice the proposals at the meeting.
According to Bahdankevich, althought the financial crisis has almost not touched on our country, the economic crisis in this country began even earlier. The crisis was caused by the attempts of the Belarusian leadership to preserve the Soviet-style totalitarian economic model.
“I will give concrete figures to justify our conclusions. I will say that the deficit of the trade balance has increased twofold. We have a huge inflation, which eventually led to the devaluation of the national currency. The devaluation has not reduced the deficit of the trade balance. In this regard, decentralization is our main proposal. Unemployment, housing services, transport, etc are the problems that must be dealt with at the regional level. Therefore, finances and decision-making should be made at that level. Besides, our domestic market is not developed. In Europe, there is almost no country where the share of imports accounts for 70 percent of the gross domestic product amounts. This is proof that we have not created a national economy”.
The experts propose three programs to overcome the crisis.
“The first program is to stabilize the costs and to level the payment balance. The second program deals with the de-monopolization of the competition development. Whatever is state-owned means monopolization. The third program is to develop the domestic market, including the stimulus plan by the state, people’s privatization, new jobs, the development of small- and medium-size businesses, the sale of land to the population”, says Bahdankevich.
Leanid Zaika, the director of the Minsk-based Strategy think tank, was responsible for writing the proposals regarding the development of small- and medium-size businesses. In his view, the crisis will continue for at least three years. It is the free business that will help Belarus overcome the crisis.
“Our proposals relate to a new economic policy based on the interests of owners and on the development of private entrepreneurship. But we are not talking about the nomenclature business, because the nomenclature can now grab major enterprises and will continue pulling money from tax-payer money later. No. The business should be national, based on private owners. Thus, we propose two variants of the economic policy: first – adaptation; second – the formation of a new economic policy with advanced taxation systems beginning from 2010”.
Interesting economic proposals were added to the program by Aleh Trusau, the chairman of the Belarusian Language Society. In his view, it would be almost impossible to get out of the crisis without the private ownership of the land.
“Each urban resident who has a country house should be given 0.5ha of land into private ownership. Each farmer should be given 1 ha. Land should be given to all the citizens so that they would be able to use it as a mortgage, to build new apartments for this money, etc. Land should become a commodity. The state could keep 40 percent of the land like in Sweden, for instance. This means that water, rivers, forests remain in the ownership of the state”.
All the experts that we have talked to maintain that the current Belarusian government is unable to implement their proposals. They reckon the government should have resigned long time ago to give way to new impartial managers. While the government is unlikely to resign, the experts hope very much that their proposals will be heard at least. Stanislau Bahdankevich is actually satisfied that now they have a higher rostrum to voice their views and the list of their listeners includes high-ranking government officials.
