Due to the fault of regime Belarusians to lose annually 500 million dollars more :: Charter'97 :: News

A statement of a Russian first deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov that the Baltic oil pipeline system bypassing Belarus can be put in operation in the shortest possible time has been commented to the Charter’97 by an economist Yaraslau Ramanchuk: “For the seventh month Belarus cannot reach the level of business-like, pragmatic relations with Russia, our main trade partner in the sphere of energy sources transit. To be at war without proclaiming war, pretending nothing is happening is a political and economic dead-end of the Belarusian regime. This mistake will cost us annual loss of half a billion dollars, and maybe more,” the expert said.

“Russia wants to realize energy agreements of Putin and Schroeder, as relations between Russia and Germany are gradually getting colder, and these agreements can be revised. The second aspect is creation of alternative transport ways bypassing Belarus with the aim of diversification of deliveries. Russia wants to exclude a possibility of blackmailing by countries transporting its energy resources. A work on construction of pipeline systems for gas and oil is done simultaneously, and it causes a rather serious threat of losing benefits from transit for Belarus. An alternative pipeline means that Belarus would receive much less subsidies and would not be able to dictate its conditions by blocking transit,” Ramanchuk said.

The expert believes that Russia is steadily following the strategy of actions towards Belarus chosen last year. Not having found understanding on issues of creation of a “union state”, Russia switched to market relations and attentively follows the reaction of the Belarusian side, which could include either passing political to Moscow, or adaptation of the national economy to new economic climate. And notably transformation costs are to increase. Now, according to Ramanchuk, the reaction of the official Minsk is absolutely inadequate and incompetent. The authorities are still living in the yesterday. Pretending nothing has happened.

“For the seventh month Belarus cannot reach the level of business-like, pragmatic relations with Russia, our main trade partner in the sphere of energy sources transit. To be at war without proclaiming war, pretending nothing is happening is a political and economic dead-end of the Belarusian regime. This mistake will cost us annual loss of half a billion dollars, and maybe more. We could completely compensate needs of Belarusian economy in gas by its transit. We haven’t done that, and the Belarusian regime is entirely responsible for that,” the expert said.

Russia won’t be able to increase volume of exported oil soon. These are long-term projects, demanding considerable investment. Construction of additional pipelines should be viewed as creation of alternative transport systems, which reduce risks of deliveries via Belarus. All this shows that no integration ideas will be realized. Processes of disintegration, trade conditions deterioration, cooldown in political relations are taking place,” Yaraslau Ramanchuk believes.

As we have informed, a loss of Belarus from annulment of preferences in trade with Europe could make 300-400 million Euro.