The Bird Began to Sing Early...

The real danger for the Lukashenka regime lies in the fact that the United States will join the EU sanctions.

In 2020, exports of refined oil products (including coke) amounted to 3.1 billion, i.e. about 10% of total merchandise exports of 20.04 billion dollars. Due to the current rise in the world oil prices, the export of oil products in 2021 could have been much higher if the European Union had not introduced a ban on the import of oil products from Belarus under all commodity customs codes. In the same 2020, foreign exchange earnings from oil products sold to EU countries reached $ 1.4 billion. The world prices for sawn timber and wood products have increased especially. That is why wood is cut today - chips fly.

Ukraine is in second place in terms of the purchase of Belarusian oil products after the EU. If you include bitumen and asphalt, which it buys a lot, then the same $ 1.4 billion will come out. But Ukraine has not yet joined the European sanctions. The losses for its market will be too tangible. If Belarusian refineries buy less crude oil for foreign currency, then the net foreign exchange losses of Belarus, naturally, will also decrease. From the termination of the export of petroleum products to the EU, they are estimated at $ 500 million, but if Ukraine nevertheless joins the sanctions, the losses will double ($ 1 billion).

But this is still mostly on paper. In the meantime, the principle applies - only business and nothing personal. TIt is more expensive for many Belarusian partners in export-import operations to break them. This is what the Belarusian government is counting on. The positive balance of foreign trade allows maintaining the exchange rate of the Belarusian ruble, preventing its landslide devaluation, despite the continuous withdrawal of foreign currency deposits by the population for the last 18 months in a row. During this time, more than $ 2 billion was taken out of the banking system.

Analysts have noticed that Belstat has stopped publishing detailed statistics of foreign trade statistics. For example, there is no current data on the export of oil products, potash fertilizers, machinery, equipment and mechanisms, land transport, that is, data on the most profitable items of Belarusian exports. Either these are technical reasons, or because these articles will be increasingly influenced by Western sectoral sanctions. In this regard, dull American humor comes to mind when a man threw himself from the fortieth floor of a skyscraper and, flying past the twentieth floor, thought: it turns out, there is nothing bad so far.

In our case, I would like to recall another well-known expression: the bird began to sing early...

Barys Zhaliba, Narodnaya Volya