'The Same Process That Once Caused Several Devaluation Began'

Summer will be restless.

Entrepreneur and blogger Aliaksandr Knyrovich made a forecast for the dollar exchange rate and explained why the summer will be turbulent.

"A lot of amazing things are happening in the economy, but there is a figure that we must monitor. And this is our foreign trade, which affects the devaluation, inflation, and so on," he said on Euroradio.

Thus, according to the government report, Belarus recorded a negative trade balance in the first quarter of this year.

Aliaksandr Knyrovich explains what exactly is frightening about this news:

"After all, as it has always happened. There is such a group of sales — 'goods': tractors, MAZs, and so on — we always sell them in the red, that is, we buy more than we sell. But then there is trade in services: logistics, transport, construction, IT services — there has always been a plus. And this plus overlapped this minus."

So, according to the expert, it has been the last two years.

"Frankly speaking, we did not have any Belarusian influence on the exchange rate of our dear dollar, because everything was good and balanced" notes Aliaksandr Knyrovich and quotes the figures. "In 2024 - almost plus 4 billion dollars, in 2023 — less — several hundred million.

And so, congratulations, it happened: for the first quarter, the negative balance! We began the very process that once caused several devaluation in the Republic of Belarus.

Meanwhile, the head of the government, Raman Halavchenka, set himself the goal of reaching a plus of almost a billion," the analyst recalls. However, the first quarter showed that his dreams were not destined to come true. And the tendency of further subsidence of the balance is obvious.

"This means a new threat to the Belarusian ruble in relation to the dollar," the expert explains.

Why did this situation with the foreign trade balance happened?

"First of all, because Belarus is losing the Russian market," explains Aliaksandr Knyrovich. "And secondly, because our earnings are not growing at the rate at which the economy is growing. We have too much extra money, and this affects imports."

The analyst predicts that this summer some movement in the dollar will begin.

"A modest economist will say 10%, I'm saying that there is a potential for 30%, and as a result, the dollar may turn out to be about 4 rubles. Soon we should see this movement of the dollar in Belarus, the reporting [on the balance — ed.] says that everything is going that way. Therefore, the summer will be turbulent. In July, the dollar rate will be 3.5," the expert believes.