Business news
State support for Belarusian companies to hinge on fulfillment of business plans
Roman Golovchenko
MINSK, 12 June (BelTA) – The state will provide pinpoint support to the enterprises affected by the pandemic, but support will hinge on the commitment of the enterprises to fulfilling their business plans. Prime Minister of Belarus Roman Golovchenko made the statement as he visited the automobile engineering company MAZ on 12 June, BelTA has learned.
Roman Golovchenko said: “Decisions will be made taking into account many factors. For now the government evaluates all the enterprises actually every day to determine what can be done now in order to minimize the negative effect that we see after 4-5 months into this year. This is why decisions will be made, including concerning MAZ, but naturally all of them will be strictly dependent on the commitment of the enterprises to hitting performance targets and fulfilling their business plans.”
The head of government added: “If we have to support an enterprise and the enterprise guarantees it honors and will honor its commitments, it is normal. Any owner helps their assets in a difficult situation. There is nothing extraordinary about it.”
In his words, the enterprises that can successfully argue in favor of needing temporary aid due to the complicated situation, the enterprises that can prove they will honor their commitments and will repay the aid to the state in the end can count on state support.
As for mechanisms for providing this assistance, various options can be utilized.
“Figuratively speaking, as the president put it, we are not going to drop money from a helicopter. In other words, we are not going to inject money into the charter capital or somewhere else. In every case we are going to decide what tools we should use – direct transfers from the state budget, debt instruments, loans, banking instruments. Instead of a universal solution we are going to use support measures with pinpoint precision,” Roman Golovchenko explained.
Speaking about the situation at MAZ, the prime minister noted that despite the large size of the credit portfolio the company honors its commitments and is steadily solvent, no problems with paying off the loans have been registered. “This is why in this case classic tools are likely to be used. Maybe the state will take care of subsidizing the interest rate in order to make loans rather cheap for the company, so that the company could take out loans, accomplish its tasks, and repay the money,” Roman Golovchenko specified.
The head of government also responded to critics, who claim that granting state support is a bad decision. “Show me a country that does not support its own producers,” Roman Golovchenko said. “Why do we have to abandon this principle? Why should we not care about our property? MAZ is more than a brand, more than history. It is a state asset. Any asset should be thoroughly monitored, it should receive aid and support. This is why it is quite normal for the state to pay attention to such serious structures. Moreover, we are talking about jobs, the holding company employs a total of 20,000 people.”
The crisis and the pandemic have had a substantial effect on automobile engineering companies, sales of trucks are rather low now. Roman Golovchenko pointed out that the Russian market, which is the main target market, is recovering now, but fast and decisive measures should be taken in order to be competitive in comparison with Russian manufacturers and foreign ones on the Russian market.
“Since we are in the common economic space, one feels we should have equal terms of market access. Nevertheless, certain protectionism is present on the Russian market and preferential conditions are enabled for national manufacturers. This is why we need to understand how we should shape our policy in these conditions, what needs to be done in order to increase our market share instead of simply holding on to it,” the prime minister concluded.
print version
make home page
add to bookmarks
