Light Industry Complains About Cheap Asian Shopping Facilities

Belarusian goods cannot compete with Asian products.

Asian stores with cheap goods have become a “real problem” for Belarusian light industry enterprises, the chairman of the Belarusian trade union of light industry workers, Mikhail Kastsian, says. According to him, it is difficult for the Belarusian goods to compete with such products due to its low price, the Federation of Trade Unions reports.

– Producers from the countries of Southeast Asia have flooded our market with goods of inadequate quality and at prices significantly lower than on our domestic products. This leads to a decrease in demand for goods of the Belarusian light industry, which, in turn, adversely affects the level of wages in the industry, – Mikhail Kastsian says.

The forced downtime at enterprises is among the other problems of the light industry. “But it is worth noting that the number of workers who are on leave without saving or with partial saving of wages is reducing. For 10 months of 2018, their number has decreased by almost 2 times compared with the same period of 2017 – from 4294 to 2623,” – Mikhail Kastsian says.

According to him, over the past 5 years, the number of employees in the industry has decreased by more than 15%. In January-August 2018, the average number of employees was 47,513, for the same period of 2017 – 48,752. The fall amounted to 2.5. The trade union leader notes that the main reasons for the shortage of personnel are the low prestige of the light industry professions, the unwillingness of young people to receive a working specialty, and low wages. For 11 months of last year, the average nominal wage in the industry amounted to 693 rubles.