26 December, Vitebsk /Diana Kurilo - BELTA/. The Chairman of the Vitebsk City Executive Committee, Viktor Nikolaikin, believes that the heads of the city's enterprises underestimate the labour of their employees. The mayor made this statement today at a session of the city council, where the results of the socio-economic development of the regional centre in 2012 and the draft forecast indicators for 2013 were discussed, as reported by a BELTA correspondent. The average wage in November of the current year in Vitebsk amounted to Br3968 thousand. Although in the region Vitebsk is second only to Novopolotsk in terms of average wage, it lags behind other regional centres of Belarus in this indicator. At the same time, Vitebsk is one of the few cities where the growth of labour productivity outpaces the growth of the wage level. "This indicates that the labour of employees is underestimated," the mayor believes. The Chairman of the City Executive Committee demanded that the directorate eliminate the imbalance within the 1st quarter of 2013 and revise approaches to wage payments, taking into account the growth of labour productivity. According to preliminary estimates, the average wage in December 2012 will be Br4350 thousand for the city, and Br3533 thousand for January-December. In 2013, the average wage will reach Br4622 thousand. In order to achieve the set wage level, Vitebsk enterprises will have to increase industrial production in 2013, bring the profitability of sales in industry on average to at least 13%, achieve a specific output of innovative products in the total production volume at the level of 42%, attract $37 million of net direct foreign investment, and increase exports by almost one and a half times. -0-

BELTA