Business news

MINSK, 4 August (BelTA) – There are no plans to provide artificial supports for the national currency in Belarus. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko made the statement in an interview with non-state mass media on 4 August, BelTA has learned.

The President stressed that the need to devalue the national currency by 30% had been prompted primarily by external factors. Similar processes had happened in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine before that. “These are our main markets that we sell products to. We couldn’t keep up [the exchange rate of the national currency] due to even these reasons. And we don’t keep it up now. You know that. We absolutely don’t. No interventions by the National Bank. The price for our national currency evolves on its own. And it will always be like that. You can believe it because we don’t have money and gold and forex reserves to spare to keep up the strong currency,” said the President.

Alexander Lukashenko reminded that at the same time the government is closely monitoring prices. “Since we know we cannot raise salaries by a lot in order to make them high in U.S. dollar terms, we have started suppressing prices. We have even decided not to go with the annual five-percent increase in prices for utilities. We have actually frozen prices for many commodities, prices for which are regulated by the state,” said the Belarusian leader.