Leanid Zaika: Hold Onto Your Hat

Lukashenka understands that the Yerevan scenario will be repeated in Belarus.

As the economists have recently calculated, Belarusians owe banks the full amount of their salaries. Last year, the amount of consumer lending grew by 75%.

Strategy analytical center head, economist Leanid Zaika commented on the current economic situation in Belarus in his interview to Charter97.org.

– Such a credit boom has never ever happened in neighboring countries. What is the reason for this and what threat is there for the banks, taking into account the credit indebtedness?

– Since 2014, the salary in Belarus has fallen by half. Why do people take loans? Because Belarusians are accustomed to live on thin air money. Very often they take loans for an apartment, for a car.

My colleagues, who work in the auto business, tell me that some people go postal. A person has several loans, and he takes another one to buy a car. They count on freeloading. And what kind of freeloading? That the bank will fall apart? Or they’ve taken a loan in rubles, and then there will be depreciation? Many people think that it will be like in the 90's: I'll take loans, and then everything will be written off.

In general, Belarus as a country has a 40 billion foreign debt. It’s four or four and a half thousand dollars for every Belarusian, including the elderly and babies. That's where the main problem is.

– What can the growth of external debt lead to in the future?

– This will lead to a situation of default. What is done in this case? The government resigns, the persecution begins, the police arrest the prime minister, put the president under house arrest, other procedures are conducted... It will happen here, as in the rest of the world.

– It seems that such a scenario is difficult to imagine in Belarus.

– It only seems to you. Look at Yerevan. Look at Lukashenka’s face, when he was talking to Nikol Pashinyan (Prime Minister of Armenia – comment of Charter97.org). He ingratiatingly said there, that it had happened because of the situation in Armenia... Pashinyan and Lukashenka are two deadly enemies. Lukashenka understands what the Yerevan scenario will be repeated in Belarus. And that's it! What can be done?

Repay forty billion, guys. Sell your apartments: fathers’, grandfathers’, grandmothers’ ones. Hold onto your hats. All the most interesting things are still to come.

We remind that changes in the political life of Armenia started on April 13, when Pashinyan organized the so-called "revolution of love." Initially, the protests concerned the appointment of former Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to the post of prime minister. After ten days of protests, Sargsyan was forced to resign.