What Will Happen To GDP, Oil Import, Belarusian Ruble Exchange Rate In 2020?

Forecasts of the economist.

According to the IPM Research Center, in 2020, the GDP growth may reach only 0.6%, and oil imports will become even more expensive, but it seems unlikely something extraordinary will happen, writes ej.by.

GDP lowered

Earlier, experts at the IPM Research Center predicted an 1% economic growth for the current year. Today they have lowered their forecast to 0.6%. Meanwhile, according to their estimates, in the next year, 2021, the growth rate of the economy can reach 1.5%.

Speaking about the plans of the country's top leadership to reach the level of $ 100 billion of GDP by 2025, the experts point out the complexity of this task. However, they believe that this is feasible if you grow by 3.5% annually, provided that the ruble depreciates against the dollar by only 1% per year until 2025.

“Accordingly, the questions of how to move from stagnation to growth remain open,” said Aliaksandr Chubryk, director of the IPM Research Center, at the presentation of the macro forecasts for 2020.

The growth in GDP will primarily be affected by oil problems, the economist said.

According to the expert, the cost of oil for Belarus increased from 65% of the world price in 2015 to about 80% in 2019.

“If this year the price of oil makes up 83-85% of the world one,the import from Russia to our country will be reduced to 15-15.5 million tons. This is due to high transportation costs,” said Aliaksandr Chubryk.

“Objectively, there is no reason for us to buy a lot of oil from Russia,” the economist pointed out. “Mirror statistics show that we export oil products far enough, and this is a very large cost. Accordingly, the more expensive the input oil is for us (if Belarus starts buying at world prices), the less likely we are to afford to export this far. ”

What about the rate and salaries

The expert also touched on topics of the Belarusian ruble exchange rate.

“Over the past three weeks, the Belarusian ruble has depreciated by 9 kapeykas, which is about 4%, and the ruble has depreciated against the basket of currencies by 0.78%,” said Alexander Chubrik.

At the same time, he suggested looking at a longer period, for example, in 2016, the three-week maximum depreciation was 6%, and against the basket of currencies - 1.57%. In annual terms, the Belarusian ruble depreciated by 0.9% (compared to February 14, 2018).

From which the economist concludes: saying that something extraordinary is happening on the market will be a great exaggeration.

“The beginning of the year is always accompanied by a seasonal depreciation of the currency,” he explained.

According to the forecast, the average annual ruble exchange rate this year will be 2.31 rubles per dollar.

An increase in wages seems unlikely to happen.