Utilities will sharply grow in price

The authorities are planning on a significant growth of utilities price rates.

According to BelaPAN, representatives of economic agencies put forward such a suggestion as they prepared a socio-economic development prediction for 2014.

The level of the utilities value, covered by the population, is planned to reach 30% throughout the year.

It is suggested that the growth of utilities price rate will be one of the measures for channeling the population’s additional incomes. According to the agecies’ experts, the average salary will account for 561 USD in 2013, and will grow in 2014 up to 625.

We would remind that the adopted Socio-Economic Development Program for 2011-2015 provides for the population’s compensating not less than 60% of the utilities costs in 2015.

As the minister of utilities Aliaksandr Shorac reported in July during a hot-line with the Zviazda newspaper, the population currently covers 16.3% of the price of the utility services.

Previously the Finance Ministry reported that throughout the whole package of utility services, including energy services (heat supply, as well as gas and electricity) the population compensated for around 22% of the costs.

It is worth noting that a suggestion has been made not to account for the utility price growth when calculating inflation, which the economic authorities plan on reducing by 2014.

“It looks possible to take the change of utilities price rate out of the consumer price index calculation, which is used as the inflation indicator”, - the first deputy head of the Economy Ministry’s research center Viktar Pinihin in his article on the preparation of the socio-economic development prognosis for 2014, published in July’s issue of the research center’s Economic Bulletin.

At the same time Belarusian economists believe that it is incorrect to exclude the utility price rate dynamics from the consumer price index calculations.

“In all the countries it is believed that the consumer price index is the main indicator revealing the cost of life as it is based on the consumer goods basket. If we exclude something from the basket, the inflation stops fulfilling its key function – reveal the cost of life”, - an economist from the Belarusian Research and Education Center (BEROC) Dzmitry Kruk.