Belarus plans to raise $3.8 billion in foreign direct investment in 2012, including $2.5 billion through privatization projects, Economy Minister Nikolai Snopkov said during a Q&A telephone session in the Respublika newspaper.
Nikolai Snopkov noted that the Economy Ministry is working on the projections for foreign direct investment, “we are debating the figure”. “But we believe that this figure is the minimum,” he said. The minister stressed that foreign direct investments are raised not for the sake of investments, bur “for the sake of new technologies, new management, and new labor productivity.”

When speaking on the overall indicators of macroeconomic forecast for 2012 year, Nikolai Snopkov said that they will depend on inflation. In 2012 the inflation is expected at 19-20% as against December 2011. But the world practice shows that if inflation is above 10%, “the economy is often unpredictable,” said the minister. “Therefore we are preparing several economy development scenarios for 2012,” he said. In this regard, we emphasize quality indicators. These are the three basic indicators which are essential for the economy. These are inflation, productivity and foreign trade surplus, the minister said.

“We see next year as the year of balancing, stabilization, the year of laying down the conditions for sustainable development in the future,” said the Economy Minister. Therefore, the most important condition is to retain the inflation in accordance with the forecast. The second condition is to increase productivity, which implies a reduction of energy and material consumption, which is the fundamental indicator in the following year. The third important aspect, according to the minister, is to achieve a trade surplus.

In this connection, the fourth factor that affects the balance of payments and productivity growth is foreign direct investments. Belarus is set to raise $3.8 billion by the year 2012, including $2.5 billion through privatization, said Nikolai Snopkov.

Belta