Experts expect considerable actual increase of payments for dwelling and communal services in Belarus :: Charter'97 :: News

According to the officials’ promises no increase of household payments for dwelling and communal services for is to occur in Belarus. Meanwhile, to the experts’ mind, the authorities will be able to find ways of demanding extra payment for water and electric power supply and central heating.

Deputy minister of economics Andrei Tur declared that the increase of payment for dwelling and communal services was performed at the beginning of the year and was not extended for the whole year period. According to the deputy minister, it is an emergency measure and it is connected with the power sources price raise for Belarus.

Lawyer and economist Syargei Balikin who once organized the first association of housing owners in Minsk considers that the actual cost of dwelling and communal services will grow, one way or another. And the state has got opportunities to compensate this growth at the expense of the population.

“Anyway, it will be the population who will bare losses. Either they will directly make payments to Belarusbank thus paying to the supplier or they will be underpaid for their job and thus more money will remain in the budget. Or they will invent an additional tax or something of the kind. But finally common people will pay either according the transparent or obscure scheme", the lawyer declared to the Deutsche welle.

Moreover, according to Syargei Balikin, a previously employed scheme of the criss-cross subsidies, when the expenses of the population for dwelling and communal services were born by the enterprises, won’t fit today because, from the expert’s point of view, the enterprises’ financial burden is too heavy now.

Director of the “EKON” foundation former head of dwelling and communal enterprise of Minsk Ivan Antashkevitch also doubts the possibility of fixed prices for dwelling and communal services for population for the rest of the year.

According to his calculations, the price raise of power sources resulted in additional demand of USD 600 million for dwelling and communal service. But according to information available with the experts, today the state is going to spend only about USD 300 million on subsidizing dwelling and communal services.

As Ivan Antashkevitch the balance of USD 300 million will be compensated ”only by the population .I guess, we are facing a sharp tariff raise”.