Belarus to sell state-owned assets at $5bn annually
Belarus has already sold Motovelo and Velcom to foreign buyers. Besides, the Belarusian president said recently that major chip-maker Integral’s controlling shares could be sold as well. This country has never before sold itself at such a large scale. However, all the transactions, carried out without open tenders, came sometimes unexpected for the workers of the sold enterprises.
In April 2007, the head of the state told a different story:
“Even if we have to privatize, it will be a transparent and fair process. There will be no unfair privatization by nomenclature or any clans”.
Piotr Martsau, the editor-in-chief of the Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta, says it is natural that privatization is being carried out backstage. Neither the economic nor political system of this country envisages market ways to sell industrial assets. At the same time, the economic situation is forcing the Belarusian authorities to raise fund urgently. However, privatization will become more transparent in the future.
“There is no full-fledged stock market, no private capital. The government has no privatization experience, knowledge, infrastructure, investment funds and large banks.
Things will start taking a more organized shape in the course of the next year. The system will become more civilized, when decisions are not taken by a single person or a group of people in the government. As usual, we are slightly lagging behind”.
Economist Leanid Zaika is confident that such privatization should be banned and that criminal cases should be opened into the transactions that have already been made.
“Who knows how Motovelo was sold? Who knows how Velcom shares were sold? What happened to the watch factory? Because of the inefficient economic policy, the government needs money, and all the leadership’s mistakes are being corrected by the sale of property”.
Most of experts note that privatization should have been started earlier, because now it looks like a belated and forced decision. The point is not about the money which the country will raise by selling its enterprises.
Economist Aliaksandr Chunryk believes that if enterprises were sold earlier, they would have worked all this time more efficiently to the advantage of the country.
“The money that will flow to the budget following the privatization is just a part of what could have been obtained. If the enterprises were sold several years earlier, they could have worked more efficiently without budget subsidies as it is the case now. The budget expenditures would be less, while revenues would rise. The point is not about how much the budget will get from the sale of those enterprises. The point is how much those enterprise will contribute to the budget later”.
The economist brings a successful example of our neighbors where privatization was carried out much earlier.
“In Estonia, an average salary in the first six months of this year amounted to $1100 per month against $330 in Belarus. Wages are also several times higher in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. All those countries carried out reforms earlier. Now they are getting an advantage”.
Economist Leanid Zaika describes the sales of Belarusian enterprises as “a new economic course”. By his estimates, there will be enough money from the sale of enterprises for 30 years.
“This country’s industrial assets are worth $132 billion. So are we going just to sit around selling those assets at $5 billion annually within the next 30 years? What is it? What kind of policy is it?”
At the same time, he says Belarus should not sell factories to Arab sheiks. Russian oligarchs could be a better option, in his opinion.
