Leanid Zaika: Teachers and doctors pay for government's mad decisions

A huge trade deficit will hit ordinary Belarusians in the pocket.

Economist Leanid Zaika, the head of the analytical centre Strategy, spoke to charter97.org about the record deficit of foreign trade in goods and services in 2013.

“The final data of trade balance will be ready by May. But the situation is absolutely clear even today. Belarus has the worst economic results among the CIS countries. Exports fell 18-20% due to a decrease in competitive ability and quality of our goods in comparison with others. It resulted in losses of 8 billion dollars. It's like you lay the table, but find that you have less money. The first thing that countries face in these conditions is problems with the external debt service obligations. We cannot pay our external debts in full and our total debt is 37 billion dollars. This is the first problem,” the expert notes.

The analyst says “the second problem is tension in the currency market. It affect the Belarusian ruble and may cause an increase in devaluation expectations”.

“Thirdly, it takes down salaries of all Belarusians. We sold 20% less goods in international comparison. We in fact lost 8 billion dollars. All Belarusians should accept the fact that salaries won't grow by more than 2-3% in 2014. The lack of foreign currency leads to such strange decisions of our government as a duty on vehicles for access to roads. It's a mad initiative. But economists in state universities approve this idea, which is unprofessional. We shouldn't have this duty,” he is sure.

Leanid Zaika adds decreasing economic results don't allow raising wages for such public sector employees as teachers and healthcare workers.

“Teachers and doctors receive the lowest wages, according to results of 2013. It hasn't been like that before,” the economist said.

We remind that last year's trade deficit reached record high 1,723.8 million dollars.