A Million Dollars from a "Sponger"

Why it is time to make the top resign.

Director of the IPM Business School Pavel Daneika stated at the Reshape 2017 conference in Minsk that if money was no longer spent on assistance to loss-making enterprises in Belarus, every unemployed citizen of the country would be able to receive a benefit of $200 a month.

What other money are the Belarusians deprived of due to inefficient model of state administration of the economy and how to stop this process? This questions of Charter97.org were addressed to the head of the Strategy analytical center, economist Leanid Zaika:

- Are this figures reliable - $200 per person a month? Now even salaries are lagging behind such indicators.

- This figure can easily be got by any student: it is enough to take an official rate of the unemployed of 40 thousand people and the amount of annual subsidies to state enterprises. And then imagine that all this money is directed at unemployment benefits.

But in fact, the money that went past the pocket of every Belarusian is much more. For instance, one can take the entire national debt (this is about $40 billion today) and divide by the number of officially registered unemployed. Then we generally get whole lot of money - a million dollars for everyone!

And in addition to this, one can calculate how much money each unemployed would receive if there were no army of spongers-officials with their incomes...

But the fact is that no such sums will be allocated to the Belarusians. This would mean a momentary collapse of the entire economy: after all, in our districts and small towns salaries are of $75-100. It will cause an immediate riot of workers for the right to be unemployed and people will rush to labor exchanges for registration.

- It is clear that this scenario is now not implementable in Belarus, but sooner or later a new authority will have to reform a loss-making public sector. How do you think this process should be implemented?

- Every loss-making enterprise has its own "medical history". State subsidies still play only a social role ensuring no workers join the ranks of protesters.

As for future reforms, I would offer not to touch these large enterprises at all, but rather stimulate the development of a private economy. Everything loss-making will die out, and the new economy will promote the country's development.

People just need freedom: there will be a critical mass of people at enterprises who want to restructure them. An initiative in the economy should come from below, then peculiarities of an enterprise will be taken into account in every specific case.

The point is that the current authority will not take such reforms because people will come to the Square and throw rotten oranges at them.

Because Belarus needs a new economy badly. All that concerns traditional meat grinders, tractors, harvesters are an obsolete collective farm and state farm option. The new economy is the economy of knowledge. These are 3D printers, robots, electric transport. Creation of jobs in these industries will have a positive effect.

It does not make any sense to restructure the same plant of refrigerators at the state level. We have such a Prime Minister as Uladzimir Semashka, he used to be the director of the Horizont television factory. He later became the Prime Minister and the plant collapsed. This is an example of "restructuring" under the current government.

Generally speaking, TV sets and refrigerators are the thing of the past. In general, the fate of such enterprises should not be in the high light. This is our past, and we must look to the future.

- What prevents Belarus from creating the economy of knowledge?

- I am optimistic about the future and possibilities of Belarus. Only 183 people of the country's leadership should resign. And 900 officials of lower ranks. We can even buy them houses in the Canaries, only to make them leave and do not disturb us. And then it will be fine.