PM: Belarus’ industry should pick up momentum

“Task No. 1 for the industry for the remaining part of the current five-year period and for the next one is accelerated growth. In the coming years there will be workforce shortage in the economy. There is only one solution - to increase productivity and modernize production. What is our development strategy for the industry? It is based on simple things - revenue, prime cost, quality, sales, personnel and creation of new high-tech production facilities,” noted Roman Golovchenko.

According to him, a key to bigger revenues is higher capacity utilization. The situation at enterprises varies: the capacities of passenger transport producers are utilized by more than 100%, while those of bearing production companies by only 12%.

Reasonable localization will help reduce production costs, the prime minister emphasized. The current localization level of 63% is inadequate. “We believe that it makes sense to use Russia’s approach: to provide state support only when a certain level of localization is achieved,” the government suggests.

During the meeting, the president demanded to pay attention to distant countries and set a foothold there. According to Roman Golovchenko, a Belarus-Africa cooperation development program for 2024-2026 has been approved. Its goal is to ramp up the export beyond its peak volumes (during its peak the export was estimated at $410 million).

“For this purpose, priority markets were identified. But which of you has been there and how many times?” the prime minister asked the participants of the meeting. “The tasks were specified for each year and for each industry, and those who fail to achieve them will be brought to task,” Roman Golovchenko warned.

The head of state also demands to retain the focus on the Russian market. Some Belarusian enterprises experienced a setback there. Aleksandr Lukashenko demanded to reverse the situation.   

“At the meeting of the presidium, we scrutinized the export of the Industry Ministry to Russia, to far-arc countries, and so on. We came to grips with all the problems and analyzed the failures, adjusted the plans,” Roman Golovchenko remarked.

He emphasized that the meaningful transformation of the industrial complex should be driven by investment and innovation, which means that it is necessary to upgrade existing facilities and build new ones. “I suggest developing a uniform industry modernization program that will be supervised by the government. This approach has proved efficient while implementing promising import-substitution projects,” said the prime minister.