Opinions & Interviews

MINSK, 31 October (BelTA) – Belarus is going to offer EAEU’s best terms for raising investment, Prime Minister Sergei Rumas said at a session of the House of Representatives where he presented the government’s action plan for 2018-2020, BelTA has learned.

“As far as investment is concerned, an ambitious task was set to create EAEU’s best conditions for raising investment in Belarus. A series of measures will be implemented to this end – from improving the domestic legislation to elaborating a special legal framework for concluding and implementing special investment agreements. A corresponding normative act is in the pipeline,” Sergei Rumas said.

The government’s action plan features measures to diversify and boost export. The export of services should grow faster than the export of goods. By 2020 the share of services in gross export should make up at least 25%. By the end of the five-year plan, commodity exports should be evenly distributed between the markets of the EAEU, the EU and faraway countries. The government has set a task to increase the share of SMEs in commodity export up to 35% by 2020.

Answering questions of MPs, the premier informed that one in seven rubles from the 2019 budget will be spent on servicing the public debt. “The increasing burden on the budget related to servicing the public debt raises concern,” Sergei Rumas noted.

Today the number one task is to optimize spending and to evenly distribute external debt payments. Some measures have already been taken to this end. In fact, the Finance Ministry is to settle part of the debts with the highest interest rates ahead of schedule. Interest rates on some internal liabilities were revised.