On October 12, Minsk / Vladimir Matveev - BELTA /. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko is not satisfied with the results of the confectionery industry's performance. The Head of State stated this today at a meeting on the development of this sector, as reported by a BELTA correspondent. The Head of State immediately outlined two groups of issues for discussion during the meeting. These are the development of the country's confectionery industry as a whole and the implementation of the relevant program until 2015, as well as the performance of the two largest enterprises in this industry - "Kommunarka" and "Spartak". The President emphasized that a number of problems have accumulated in this sphere. "Firstly, the growth rates of production in the confectionery industry are seriously lagging behind the overall economic development rates of the country. Moreover, both "Kommunarka" and "Spartak", which account for almost a third of the republican volume of confectionery production, are unfortunately not setting an example in this matter, as evidenced by statistics," said Alexander Lukashenko. According to the President, this leads to a significant reduction in the share of domestic products in the Belarusian domestic market, which is increasingly filled with foreign competitors: "If in 2005 the share of domestic confectionery sales to the population in the total sales volume in the Belarusian market was over 90%, then for the elapsed period of the current year - only slightly more than 70%". "Secondly, over the past five years, for confectionery products as a whole, there has been an almost twofold increase in the negative balance of foreign trade (from $33.8 million in 2005 to $67 million in 2011)," the Belarusian leader stated. Thirdly, Alexander Lukashenko continued, the industry practically lacks its own sales network in the main foreign markets, and the use of intermediaries significantly reduces the efficiency of all work. As the Head of State emphasized, if proper measures are not taken, Belarusian confectioners will lose their positions against the backdrop of intensifying competition in the Eurasian Economic Union, and then in the WTO. "We cannot allow this," he noted. Alexander Lukashenko demanded that government representatives report on what is being done to address the existing issues.