“Research on Privatization in Belarus: Conditions, Problems, Prospects”

On 18 July, the Crowne Plaza hotel hosted the presentation of two studies: “Privatization in the Republic of Belarus: Improving Conditions and Main Priorities” (Andrei Skryba, IPM Research Center) and “Privatization in Belarus in 2011: Auction Results, Leading Actors, Social Consequences” (independent researcher Dzmitry Isayonak, Tatsiana Chyzhova and Lidziya Mikheeva, Political Sphere Institute).
“Privatization in the Republic of Belarus: Improving Conditions and Main Priorities”.

For a long time, the Belarusian leadership followed a policy of refusing privatization and sought to increase national competitiveness through administrative management methods.

This experience of Belarus, as well as the experience of a number of other countries with a prevailing share of the state sector, demonstrated the inefficiency of state management of companies and led to a further decline in their competitiveness compared with foreign firms.

This circumstance, as well as a number of internal and external economic difficulties in recent years, has made the issue of privatizing state property relevant at the highest level.

Nevertheless, today experts and investors, both domestic and foreign, point to the very slow pace and low effectiveness of privatization in Belarus.

Among the main reasons for the contradictions between the state as owner and the investor as buyer of property are differences over the terms of privatization, as well as the absence of a systemic vision of the goals of carrying it out.

In the new economic conditions, within the framework of integration associations, the implementation of effective privatization should become a strategic task for the Belarusian leadership.
https://palityka.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/priv-2011-e1343465027545.png“Privatization in Belarus in 2011: Auction Results, Leading Actors, Social Consequences”.

During 2011, according to the plan, 181 enterprises belonging to different sectors of the economy were expected to be privatized.

The privatization process was supposed to cover enterprises with a total workforce of about 52 thousand people from all regions of Belarus.

However, the outcome of the plan’s implementation turned out to be far from what had been expected.

By the end of 2011, only 38 enterprises had been privatized, and for 2 of them the auction results were annulled for various reasons.

The process was accompanied by scandalous statements by the chair of the State Property Committee that the privatization of enterprises was being obstructed by sabotage on the part of directors, and by representatives of the business community saying that the state was not seeking to offer investors favorable conditions.

The main topics of the report within the defined problem area were the following: what caused such a divergence between supply and demand, why business is not seeking to purchase what the state is ready to sell, and who the main beneficiaries of Belarusian-style privatization are.

See also:
NAVINY.by: Belarus has revived an old privatization mechanism (http://naviny.by/rubrics/economic/2012/07/19/ic_articles_113_178522/)
Belsat: Belarusian-style privatization (http://belsat.eu/be/obiektyw/wiadomosci/a,5130,pryvatyzatsyia-pabielarusku.html)