By Anatoly Romanov
According to Alexander Sochivko, the Head of the Economy Ministry’s Department for Construction and Housing and Public Services, this year, Belarus plans to construct almost 7m sq.m of housing. Around 75 percent has already been built in the first ten months of 2010. The Minsk and Brest regions are the country’s leaders in fulfilling their annual targets, with around 90 percent of flats in multi-compartment buildings already having been constructed, with state support (costing $500-650 per square metre on average).
Alongside housing construction, great attention is being paid to enhancing the competitiveness of domestic produce over the next five years, as envisaged by the Basic Guidelines of the Programme of Socio-Economic Development of the Republic of Belarus. “Private entrepreneurial initiatives will become the basis for economic development,” asserts Alexander Yaroshenko, who heads the Economy Ministry’s Chief Macroeconomic Analysis and Forecast Department. Entrepreneurship’s contribution to the country’s GDP should rise several fold. To facilitate this ambitious goal, the state will gradually remove its directed mechanisms of economic management, while applying measures to stimulate the market.
