The government of Belarus wants to extend export support to small businesses, Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko told reporters following a meeting with the head of state on 7 December, BelTA has learned. 

“Export is actually a matter of survival for our economy. The fight for markets has never been so fierce before. Therefore, export and sales are some of our main areas of focus. We will adapt the export support system, primarily financial support, accordingly,” Roman Golovchenko said. 

According to him, proposals have already been drafted to streamline both export lending and export insurance, so that as many companies as possible could use the instruments of government support to promote their exports. “Now we have a fairly high threshold: you need to have a contract worth at least $200,000 to qualify for export loans. However, there are many enterprises that have smaller contracts, and they also deserve to receive the government support with their export,” the head of government stressed. 

The prime minister expects the appropriate documents to be approved in the near future, and then the government will be able to more actively finance the export of small companies. 

“The government seeks to significantly recalibrate certain development institutions. This pertains to financial and institutional support for exporters. We want to establish a full-fledged export agency that will deal with the entire range of issues of export support,” Roman Golovchenko added. 

A reminder, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko hosted a meeting to discuss the performance of the economy in 2020 and the draft forecast documents for 2021. A package of forecast documents was submitted to the head of state. Taking part in the meeting was a wide range of participants, including senior officials, deputy prime ministers, ministers, and governors. They shared their views and compared notes with local authorities. 

“The package of documents has already been substantively discussed by the parliament, all central public administration bodies, and regional authorities, and was approved by the head of state at large. At the same time, in the course of the discussion a number of proposals were put forward to fine-tune these documents. In the very near future, we will make the last adjustments together with the State Control Committee and the Belarus President Administration; the documents are expected to be approved by the new year,” Roman Golovchenko said.