Business news

Alexander Lukashenko said: “I hope it is the last discussion we are going to have at this level. We have invested a lot. What are the results? How are we going to proceed from now on?”

The Belarus President reminded about the reasons that prompted the modernization of the national woodworking industry. “The effort was necessitated by the strategic guidelines for developing the national economy. In line with the strategy we had to reform the structure of the economy in order to tie the products we make and sell on the domestic and foreign markets to domestic resources for the sake of avoiding the dependence on imported resources the way it is in other branches of the economy,” said Alexander Lukashenko.

“Back then we turned out attention to the woodworking industry and agriculture because the woodworking industry can use Belarusian wood. It seems to me that unfortunately we cannot process all the mature wood on time, the wood gets above the optimal age. And agriculture relies on our land and our people,” noted the head of state.

The President stressed that these branches had not sprung from greenfield conditions, Belarus had good specialists and good traditions in the industry. “But since we did considerable damage to the economy, including the woodworking industry, in the last few years of the Soviet Union and the troubled years that followed, we could not tolerate the deplorable state of affairs any longer. This is why we went ahead with the relevant reforms of the woodworking industry,” said the Belarusian leader.

Alexander Lukashenko said he intended to hear out reports on this year’s performance of the basic woodworking industry enterprises, reports about prospects of their development and proposals to improve their performance.