Russia Demands Advance Payment for Energy from Belarus :: Charter'97 :: News

Russian gas suppliers came up with new and stricter contract conditions for the Belarusian consumers. “Gasprom”, “Itera” and some other Russian companies will no longer tolerate respites in payments for the supplied gas and sometimes even require 30% of advance payment. Moreover, all payments must be carried out in monetary form, without any barter operations as previously.

By early February Belarus’ exterior indebtedness for energy resources, imported from Russia, amounted to $226mln. Therefore, since the November gas blockade, imposed on the Belarusian consumers by “Gasprom”, they paid less than $60mln in old debts. That very circumstance made the permanent suppliers demand stricter conditions in the contract provisions.

In particular, “Gasprom’s” leadership categorically denied Belarusian barter and, in compliance with the February bills, will require solely money transfers. “Itera”, in its turn, announced that it would demand advance payments from March at the level of 30%. At the same time the suppliers already declared inadmissibility of payments’ respite, as has been the case before.

One should bear in mind that we mean not only gas: today companies developed greater indebtedness for electricity. Nobody really expected things to happen this way. Many enterprises aspired to cover current gas supplies’ expenditures, not properly clearing off their debt for electric energy.

Economists claim that if Russians indeed keep their word and put Belarus before such severe conditions, the heads of the two states will hardly avoid repetition of last year’s conflict.