Golovchenko on negative trade balance: no catastrophe at all
After his report to the Head of State, Belarus’ Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko told journalists about the reasons for the negative balance in this year’s foreign trade. As already noted, accepting the PM’s report today, the President drew attention to the fact that this year there is a small, but negative balance in foreign trade.
“As far as I understand, the Economy Ministry and the Government should have paid attention to this and analysed the situation in this regard,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
The Head of Government noted in an interview with journalists, “There is absolutely no catastrophe here. If we talk about the reasons, they are prosaic. The global oil price has risen. We buy crude oil, which affected the increase in the cost of imports. Moreover, prices for traditional Belarusian goods in foreign markets have decreased somewhere. Although we expanded the physical volume of exports by almost 9 percent, we received a little less in money due to the price drop.”
At the same time, the Head of Government noted that the reverse dynamics has already been observed since April, “Prices are starting to rise. I think the figure of the negative balance will be covered by the results of three quarters.”
