Leanid Zaika: No one must give loans to Lukashenka

To borrow in the times of an economic crisis equals to buying leather seats for a wrecked car.

The opinion came from the head of the analytical center Strategy, an economic Leanid Zaika, as he commented for the charter97.org web-site on the refusal of the Eurasian Economic Community’s Anti-Crisis Fund to provide Minsk with the sixth tranche of the loan.

“I want to say that the situation, in which the Belarusian economy found itself is not difficult. These are some kind of sensory terms. The situation is actually crisis. Belarus has final entered a classical crisis. From the point of view of economics, we have the GDP dropping, the decrease of industrial output by 7% in January and the decrease on all the main indicators. This should make the people, who consider themselves responsible, take decisive measures, instead of arranging some demonstrative meetings with biathlonists with the purpose of concealing the failure of economics policy”, - the expert believes.

The economist highlighted that in the crisis conditions it is quite dangerous to borrow money.

“Let’s say your car broke down, you are in a field, but at the same time you are buying leather seats. This is not necessary - the car should simply be repaired. That is why Belarusian industry needs to be renewed, needs the curtailment of production. For example, in transport machine building the output has already decreased by two times. The mistake of Belarusian leadership is that it only sees the problem of sales. It sees the problem in goods not being sold. But this is not a problem, this is a consequence. The problem is that enterprises cannot yet make effective decisions by themselves”, - he pointed out.

In the analyst’s opinion, “the question, why the tranche is not coming, is absolutely natural”.

“Even a poor student of MSU’s distant education course will understand that if the country’s GDP grow by less than 1% and the salary grows by 18%, such a country should not be given money, because it will be used inefficiently”, - Leanid Zaika concluded.

We would remind that Eurasian Economic Community’s Anti-Crisis Fund listed the criteria of the loan program that Belarus had not met. The Anti-Crisis Fund’s Council plans to reconsider the issue of allocating the sixth tranche of the loan in the third quarter of 2014.