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How Long Will the Authorities "Drive the Bike"

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How Long Will the Authorities "Drive the Bike"

The history of the Motorcycle Plant is a great example of what mismanagement can lead to.

Ivan Rak, Development Director of Adrius for Germany, Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, and Belarus, does not share the optimism of the Belarusian authorities in relation to Motorcycle Plant, Salidarnasts writes.

"The resumption of production, such as the Minsk Motorcycle Plant, is a suicide," the businessman notes in an interview on Primus. "These bicycles are already made everywhere, and going back to the past is pointless. It's easy to reinvent the bicycle. It is important that to make it be able to move. How long can you run around with this? We keep modernizing, but still nothing.

If there is no business plan, then keeping something in the name of maintaining national pride is pointless, the expert said.

In general, the history of the Motorcycle Plant is an excellent example of what inept management can lead to. After all, 25 years ago it was a rather serious enterprise, which employed under 3 thousand people. Now 120 work there and the company does not feel good. And this despite the fact that the demand for bicycles has recently increased dramatically.

- It is noteworthy that when Lukashenka discussed this issue, he made the following remark: we need to keep this production, but at the same time reduce production areas, that is, give these tidbits for the right purpose. Therefore, this bike is like in that song of Barykin: "I will drive the bike for a long time, I will stop it in remote meadows." In what meadows will it be stopped when this production is restored? These are unanswered questions.

According to the businessman, the fact that enterprises die and are born is a matter of normal business demographics.

- We must start with the sale of dilapidated factories and these production facilities, which, in principle, cost nothing. We need to get rid of these monsters of the Soviet era. Because now new technologies allow building quickly and cheaper, and we offer these sheds, - says Ivan Rak.

This desire to preserve "our everything" contradicts economic science and the laws of arithmetic and, as a result, does not allow us to do better, more qualitative, and cheaper.

- This is all from ignorance. We have "red chiefs" in these regional executive committees and district executive committees, "red directors" in factories who live in the past, - the businessman explains. "They don't even understand that there are new ways of development, new ways of modernization, new sales markets. There is only a desire to remain in the cage of the vertical of power, to have some kind of guaranteed income in the form of some kind of ration, some privileges, and opportunities. They are absolutely not interested in the development of the country as a whole. They, like these landowners, have their own latifundia with the serfs.

Ivan Rak told how a Russian investor invested in the agricultural business in Belarus.

- So they summon him to a planning meeting at the regional executive committee! He has to sit there and listen to what they have to say. He must fulfill the lowered forecast indicators. And they decide there how much onion he is obliged to leave in the country and how much to sell to Moscow.

So he says: I am interested in selling everything in the Russian Federation, but they tell him: no, there is a food quota for private traders too, so you cannot sell everything. And if he didn’t sell everything, then the remaining 30% rotted by the spring because our warehouse facilities are not the same as facilities with refrigerators in the Netherlands. This is the problem!

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