Belarus’ economy minister: We are going against the tide

We are going against the tide addressing our tasks in a new environment, Belarus’ Economy Minister Aleksandr Chervyakov told the ONT TV channel, BelTA has learned.

“Today, the economy is mobilized more than ever to address the tasks set by the head of state. First of all, we need to make sure that our households do not feel the impact of the sanctions. Secondly, enterprises should keep working. We are going against the tide. Our flagship enterprises - MAZ, MTZ, Gomselmash, Atlant, enterprises that produce building materials - keep working, they have received enough orders to keep themselves busy throughout the second half of the year. We have a foreign trade surplus. In the first five months it exceeded $1.7 billion. This shows that we sell more than we buy from abroad,” said Aleksandr Chervyakov.

According to him, Belarus perceives sanctions as a stimulus to adapt to the new environment. “We need to be proactive and set our own rules on our territory. This will be our key to success. The most important thing today is to very quickly redirect our commodity flows to other markets - Russia, China. I would like to note that over the five months this year we increased the exports to the Russian market by 17% and to China 1.5 times. So we see that our efforts are bearing fruit,” the minister noted.

“The departure of many companies from the Russian market is opening a window of opportunity for us, and now we need to quickly take the vacant niches,” Aleksandr Chervyakov added.