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Government sees reserves for Belarus' GDP growth in 2019

MINSK, 25 February (BelTA) – There are reserves for the country’s GDP to increase by 4% in 2019, Belarus’ First Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Turchin said in an interview to Belarus 1 TV channel, BelTA has learned.

“I think that GDP increase at 4 percent is slightly higher than the growth rate of global GDP, yet achievable. We see that there are reserves for GDP growth, and they are big. We need to take more decisive steps in different directions to make this happen,” the first vice premier said. According to him, efficient corporate governance is the first step to increase efficiency. It is necessary to build effective management to give impetus to the development of enterprises.

“We submitted to the Belarus President Administration a draft decree on a number of enterprises, the supervisory boards of which should be headed by senior officials, plus the top 100 joint stock companies of the country, where we will build an efficient corporate governance system,” Alexander Turchin said and added that not only civil servants will head the supervisory boards.

The first deputy prime minister said that the Economy Ministry had calculated GDP for Belarus with different labor productivity scenarios. “With results for these leading enterprises, we would have Br150 billion (GDP),” he said.

According to Alexander Turchin, a new law on public procurement will come into force on 1 July 2019. At present, the interested government agencies are busy with preparing an electronic platform for public procurement. “Last year, about 80% of public funds that were spent on procurement were used under the single sourcing procedure. The single source procurement system will go online in a test regime on 1 July. It will become obligatory from 1 January 2020. All procurement will be made electronically. They will all be transparent. Publicity and public control are the best way to fight corruption,” the first deputy prime minister said.

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