President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has tasked the government and oblast administrations with raising main development targets of small and medium urban communities. “The development goals should be as tense to reach as possible,” remarked Alexander Lukashenko, as he was summing up results of the permanent seminar for executives of national and local state administration bodies. “It is bad when I’m told that the measures outlined by the state programme have been fulfilled,...

Entrepreneurship should be encouraged for the sake of developing small towns in Belarus, head of state Alexander Lukashenko told a seminar of executives of national and local state administration bodies on November 29. The President remarked, with a view to stimulating free enterprise in small towns additional measures had been taken to enable simplified preferential taxation, to allow selling unused and ineffectively used state-owned facilities at auctions with the starting price as low as...

The upgrading of modern weaponry remains the main direction the enhancement of Belarus’ defence capacity follows. The statement was made by President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko on November 27, as he visited the State Defence Industries Committee to get familiar with the progress in modernising air defence systems. “The defence capacity of a country is a most important strategic element. It is an axiom. There are two ways to keep up with the times: we can import ultramodern weapons...

The National Bank of the Republic of Belarus (NBRB) sees no reasons for a reiteration of the problem situation witnessed on the Belarusian foreign exchange market in late 2006, First Deputy Chairman of the National Bank Pavel Kallaur told the press on November 27. “The situation that emerged on the foreign exchange market in late 2006 and manifested itself in higher inflation and devaluation expectations is ruled out this year. Today there are no reasons for such risks,” underlined Pavel...

National association Belsemena of the Belarusian Agriculture and Food Ministry has started shipping humanitarian supplies to Moldova following a request of Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev for assistance with alleviating drought consequences. According to Deputy Director General of Belsemena Piotr Romanovsky, following the President’s instruction Belarus will ship 150 tonnes of seed potato worth $55,000 and 100 tonnes of wheat ($30,500) to Moldova. Coupled with the cost of clearance,...

Within two years a new plant should be set up in Osipovichi for producing railway cars. The instruction was issued by President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko when he visited Mogilev Carriage Works on November 23. The head of state approved the project for starting up the production of railway cars in Osipovichi. Belarusian Railways and ZAO Grand Express (Russia) will take part in the project. “It is good that another investor and carriage producer will come to Belarus. We will create new...

Foreign experts have been noticing some improvements of the investment climate in Belarus, representative of the German consultative group of economic reform in Belarus Doctor Riccardo Giucci stated during a session of the working group of the 10th Minsk Forum. “In comparison with last year there is a clear tendency in improving the investment climate in Belarus,” he said. In his words, foreign investors “are interested in Belarus and are ready to invest in the country’s economy”....

Strategic relations between Belarus and Russia cannot be swung by market fluctuations, Nikolai Udovichenko, director of the second department for CIS states of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at the X Minsk forum on November 23. He said, Belarus and Russia had reached a high level of integration. He pointed out the “consistent and transparent way of cooperation between our countries”. “Some may say that the progress of integration of Belarus and Russia is rather slow. But...

The President of Belarus gave instructions to continue working on making recreation less expensive and on improving recreation and treatment opportunities in the country as he heard out a report from Leonid Kozik, Chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus (FTUB), on November 22. The press service of the Belarusian head of state told BelTA, Alexander Lukashenko had been informed about the current state of affairs in the Belarusian trade union movement. Trade unions of Belarusian...

The second Belarusian space satellite is expected to be launched in 2009, Sergei Zolotoi, Chief Designer of the BelKA space satellite, Director of Geoinformational Systems company of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, told a press conference in Moscow. The satellite will be placed into orbit by a Russian booster Rokot, which will be launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome. “Regretfully, the first project has not been implemented and work is in progress to build a new spacecraft....