The Entrepreneur Named the Date of the Financial Collapse of Lucanomics

The prerequisites for this have already been laid.

A month after the start of the protests in Belarus, the country's largest "Belarusbank" limited the issuance of loans to the population. And the Belarusian authorities were unable to agree with the International Monetary Fund on allocating financial support of $ 940 million due to the pandemic's consequences.

Over the past month, businesses (including those created by Belarusians abroad) managed to organize several large projects to support protesters and victims. At the same time, entire companies, including those from the promising IT sector, declare about moving from Belarus in the context of a prolonged political crisis.

The journalists of the "Current Time" asked the businessman Uladzimir Zakharau, the owner of a chain of shopping centers in several cities of the country, how businessmen live now and how they see the nearest and slightly distant economic prospects.

- Strikes and going out on the streets, that's all. Outwardly, it sounds like this is the toolkit for achieving the goal, which is called: "We want to be heard. We want to exercise our right to decide and for our voice to at least be heard."

- And in fact?

- What is happening now inside the country, I, as a person who already has 30 years of experience of internal participation and viewing what is happening - I have not seen this at all in all 30 years of my work.

To make it clear. Money is also a commodity. So, until recently, we all knew that the refinancing rate of the National Bank is the very indicator for which money is bought. In the everyday sense, this is what we are used to calling loans or other relationships between the state and people. Now this rate is declared as less than 8%. Several banks have announced that they are ready to buy money for 24% - three times the price. Can you imagine what is going on inside a country in which the same product, declared by the state, costs X rubles, and everyone is ready to buy it for X three - three times more? I have not seen anything like this in the entire 30-year history of Belarus.

In our banking sector, in the field of monetary relations, people took two billion dollars from the bank in a month and a half. For the first time, I come across a situation in which the bank asks me not to carry out payments from Friday to Monday when the bank does not know where to get the money. Or he can take them, but three times more expensive than it was recently on the market. Imagine a ten-million-strong country with no loans at all - this is Belarus now.

- What does this mean in perspective?

- Imagine a country where people are now hoping that they will lend housing, that they will build an apartment for growing families, and they are told: "No, this will not happen." Imagine a country in which it is impossible to borrow a penny officially from any of the banks. And it was done by people, plus they just took real money from the banking structure. Let me remind you once again: two billion in a month and a half. This toolkit does not only work; it shocks everything that happens around the country.

You have wrong information on strikes. Yes, since there are mass arrests, and certain responsibilities are imposed on those who risked by creating strike committees and so on, in enterprises of the republican level, strikes have largely taken on an Italian character. People come to work, but they don't really work. They are making safety claims; instead of making 10 units, they started making two. This is a fact; it is indisputable. It's not like a secret, but that's exactly what happens. In these conditions, when earlier the country had 100 units of production, and now it has only 20. Can you imagine what will happen?

And the most important thing. People who are not connected either with the economy or with taxation do not understand that the peak of the craziness of this lack of money in order to finance projects related to kindergartens, cleaning, energy payments and everything else is the peak of tax periods, the receipt of money to the budget. For Belarus, this is October 22 and, most importantly, January 22 - according to the results of the year.

At this time, there will be ... I do not even know what word to choose, it is beyond my understanding what awaits Belarus on January 22. At the moment, when everyone is waiting for the payment of annual taxes, and there simply will be none. We do not have VAT on imports, our exports and imports are completely paralyzed, we do not have production of real products. We have, at best, drawn money, which will eventually turn into pieces of paper.

- Does this mean that people have actually already achieved the goal of being heard, and this is just a matter of time?

- There is another point at the macro level that you are not talking about. Did the people who came out with protests achieve this? Take statistics - this is in free access. Over the past month, the sale of our government bonds, both internal and external [loan] - relationships with those who are willing to give us money - is zero. Zero. This is just a collapse.

We have always sold our simple state debt in the usual way, at least on some conditions, at some increased or not increased interest for hundreds of millions of dollars. What were we selling? We were selling trust. This trust in the state both inside the country and abroad has not been there over the past month. This means that there will be no funding for both external and internal needs of the state for the coming months.

And here the question is: how will Russia behave? Because the 300-something million gas debt is a separate problem for Russia itself. And suppose Russia considers it possible and necessary to finance some other measures personally to preserve this, let's say, state. In that case, we will see that Russia actually chooses the person, not the state. This is not even upsetting; it makes people draw other conclusions that the Russian leadership will not like.

- Is what you are saying now - sedition or common sense analysis?

- This is not sedition; it is a fact. When people were given to understand that their opinion would not be taken into account, they simply include retaliatory actions exactly within the frameworks within which the current legislation allows, so that, being protesting, they do not become violators of this legislation. These actions for them are the only possible ones under the current legislation, so they do it.