The Belarusian government expects real revenues of the population to rise, Prime Minister of Belarus Andrei Kobyakov declared.
According to the head of government, real salaries in Belarus rose by 1% in Q1 (by 0.5% in January-February). According to statistics, in March the average salary was slightly above Br770.
“Salaries are on the rise. The growth may not be as large as we would like it to be, yet salaries are rising,” stated the Prime Minister. “Considering the rising real salaries, we expect the growth rate of real earnings to start getting into positive values little by little. At present the growth rate is below 100%.”
The government expects things to get better.
“We don’t have the statistics yet, but I think it is too early to say that the growth rate of real earnings will be at least 100% in Q1,” said Andrei Kobyakov. “It is quite a task. We are going to make plans to reach this threshold in the second half of the year.”
When asked about how the Belarus president’s instruction to raise the average salary to Br1,000 this year was being fulfilled, Andrei Kobyakov noted that if all the positive economic trends stayed in place, the goal could be reached. It is important that the labor productivity growth rate is ahead of the salary growth rate.
“Higher salaries make no sense without higher labor productivity,” added Andrei Kobyakov. “We don’t just want to report good growth figures. Executive personnel need to make it last. We don’t want any window dressing. We need stable, measured, and incremental results.”
Andrei Kobyakov also talked about how people were getting jobs as part of the efforts to fulfill Belarus president decree No. 3.
“The number of job applicants is on the rise, partially because jobs are being made available. But we cannot give everyone a job where they can earn Br1,000. Even with Br1,000 as the average salary, there will be less lucrative jobs that someone has to do, too. It is one of the goals outlined by decree No. 3. We are not giving away fish. Instead we can give everyone a fishing rod so that they could fish as much fish as they are capable of or as much as they need,” summed up the Prime Minister. (BelTA/Business World Magazine)
