MINSK, 5 April (BelTA) – The Belarus government action program for 2016-2020 still contains flexible budget, monetary management, and foreign trade policies. Prime Minister of Belarus Andrei Kobyakov made the statement as he presented the document in the Oval Hall on 5 April, BelTA has learned.
According to the head of government, the program contains a number of important peculiarities that pre-determined the approaches to the program’s development and content. The document was put together in conditions of high indetermination of external geopolitical factors, economic factors, and factors relating to raw materials. “Today nobody in the world can predict precisely how the events will unfold, up to what level the conflicts will escalate, how it will influence the financial markets and markets of raw materials. Expert opinions concerning pricing trends vary a lot. In these conditions the government’s action program contains flexibility in the budget, monetary management, and foreign trade policies in addition to measures meant to make resource distribution more effective,” stated Andrei Kobyakov.
Apart from that, the Prime Minister said that the government’s fields of concern are formulated as specifically as possible.
At the same time the action program does not contain performance parameters in digital form. “Members of the parliament have noticed it. But the program is in no way a plan to manually control the economy. It is more than reports and figures. The program contains quality goals aiming for end results,” explained Andrei Kobyakov.
According to the Prime Minister, the program breaks down by fields of concern the measures and mechanisms, which are supposed to secure a systemic increase in the competitive ability of the national economy, reduce its dependence on external conditions, resume economic growth, and raise living standards of the nation. “Bearing the goal in mind, it is necessary to make the transition to an innovative way of development. We need a complex transformation of the economy accompanied by better individualized support for individuals,” believes the Belarusian head of government.
As far as systemic macroeconomic and institutional matters are concerned, according to Andrei Kobyakov, they are reflected in documents of a higher order — Belarus president decree No. 78 and the draft five-year program for the country’s social and economic development. Decisions and measures are detailed in the relevant government programs and plans. “A package of 20 government programs — 14 of them have been adopted already and six drafts are going through the approval procedure — has been forwarded to the parliament together with the suggested government program,” he said.