Mikalai Snapkou: Belarus' GDP halfway depends on Russia
5- 11.12.2014, 10:10
- 8,500
Economic growth in Belarus about halfway depends on Russia.
Economy Minister Mikalai Snapkou stated that in his interview to BelaPAN.
Current situations in Russian economy affect the Belarusian one in an extreme way. At the moment, either directly or indirectly our GDP halfway depends on Russia", the Minister said.
At the same time he noted that in 2015 the dynamics of GDP in Russia will hardly affect the implementation of the approved forecast on economic growth rate in Belarus (at the level of 0.2-0.7%). Snapkou intends that even in case of the Russian GDP decline, next year the demand for Belarusian products will remain. "The goods such as food and oil products, which are being delivered to Russia in large amounts, are the last to refuse of. Therefore, we do not expect the export decrease of these products to Russia", the Minister said.
The export of Belarusian engineering products in the coming year is not expected to decrease either, Snapkou believes. As for the export of production goods (first of all engineering products), in our estimates, it has reached its bottom. We assume that in 2015 investment exports will remain at least at the current level", the Head of the Ministry of Economy said.
In light of the foregoing, he added: "we do not tend to harmonize our economic growth possibilities in future year with Russian factors". "In case there is a GDP decrease in Russia in 2015, it will hardly be significant", Snapkou noted.
According to him, "one of the main factors affecting the situation in Russia is oil price". "If the oil price is not under $80 per barrel, so it will be good both for Russian and Belarusian economics", the Minister of Economy said.
However, he added: the oil price decline above this level is undesirable as it leads to some uncritical decreased trade surplus of oil and oil products. "But speaking of this factor's influence (oil price) on our country, $1 fall in oil price causes for us $20 million decrease in trade surplus of oil and oil products in annualized terms", Mikalai Snapkou said.
