Business news

21 Sep 2021

Prime minister: The next year’s budget will keep social focus

An archive photo

MINSK, 21 September (BelTA) – The central state budget for 2022 will remain focused on people. Prime Minister of Belarus Roman Golovchenko made the relevant statement during a session of the Council of Ministers on 21 September, BelTA has learned.

The Council of Ministers convened to discuss Belarus’ draft social and economic development forecast, the main monetary management guidelines, and the draft central state budget for 2022.

Roman Golovchenko said: “The state budget will keep its social focus. Spending on public sector salaries, on pensions for the military, on support for large families, and other things will be raised significantly next year. Apart from that, Br476 million has been appropriated for subsidizing housing construction as part of presidential decree No.240 or 1.5 times as much as in 2021.”

In his words, the next year’s budget has been put together taking into account the risks arising from the sanctions and an inertial scenario of development of the economy. The draft budget expects the GDP to grow by 1% while the target is set at 2.9%. This is why all the additional revenues the economy will generate will be accumulated in special reserve funds. In essence they represent an additional source for funding budget spending, including salary raises, and additional expenses that may be encountered during the year, the prime minister explained.

The prime minister also specified the key figures mentioned in the next year’s projections. The GDP growth rate will be 102.9%, he said. The growth rate of the real disposable cash income is expected to reach 102%. Fixed-capital investments are supposed to grow by 3.3%. The export of merchandise and services is expected to rise by 6.3%. The key factors driving Belarusian economy growth in 2022 will be the rising foreign demand, which is supposed to contribute 1.8 percentage points to the GDP growth, and a balanced increase in domestic consumption without excessive pressure on the financial market and the forex market. According to the Economy Ministry’s projections concerning the development of foreign markets, foreign currency proceeds can grow by $2.7 billion. The growth will have to rely primarily on higher export in physical terms, Roman Golovchenko noted.



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