On December 15, Minsk / Alina Grishkevich - BELTA /. The concrete result of import substitution should be considered through the indicator of foreign trade balance. The number 1 task here is to achieve a sustainable excess of exports over imports. As President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko noted, speaking today at a permanent seminar for managerial staff, this is a matter not only of economics but also of national security, a BELTA correspondent reports. "Ministers and governors, each individually, can report today on significant export growth and import reduction. But when you put everything into a common pot, the country as a whole has a negative balance. This should not happen anymore," the head of state demanded. "We agreed at the beginning of the year: ministers are responsible for the entire industry, the governor-general is responsible for the entire territory." The President said that today he would like to hear answers and proposals on the following issues: why are goods with a low degree of processing exported, and with a deep degree of processing imported, sometimes from the same raw materials, how is the work on import substitution organized, why were the expected results from the National Export Development Program not achieved in the last five-year period? Alexander Lukashenko emphasized that Belarus has not yet learned how to properly sell its products. Throughout the last five-year period, there was a steady decline in the share of exports in the total volume of industrial production. The head of state warned that self-reports are unacceptable at the seminar. A kind of brainstorming session is needed so that after two days of work, everyone has a clear plan on what and how to do in their area of work, how to mobilize subordinates to solve complex problems. -0-

BELTA