Vasily Shlyndikov: Citizens of the country should become investors in the first place

Holding specialized forums only in theory contributes to attracting foreign investment in the country.

This opinion was stated by Vasily Shlyndikov, ex-president of the concern “Amkodor”, in a conversation with the EuroBelarus Information Service.

The VII Belarusan Investment Forum will be held in Minsk on November 15-16 with the participation of Belarusan prime minister Mikhail Myasnikovich. According to Vasily Shlyndikov, the forum will be nothing more than a conversation on the topics of investment.

"These conversations will be held until our citizens become investors, buy shares, become the owners of factories and ships. Until then, nothing happens, and foreign citizens will not put their money into our economy", noted the expert.

According to him, international experience suggests that foreign investors come into the country only after the country’s citizens demonstrate their willingness to invest. And in the case of Belarus, it can happen only "once there is a normal economy, once we give up building the socialism, resuscitation of the socialist economic system in a given country". "Once we stop to manually manage the economy by decrees, but the legislation will be in rule", added Vasily Shlyndikov.

He believes that leaving the projects in Belarus by certain investors is related exactly to the fact that they "have faced our system of management". "That is, they had hoped for contractual obligations, being in our authorities’ good graces, thus they were thinking, "nothing, we’ll break through". And then gradually they realized that all of this would be very risky, therefore, they refused", said the source of EuroBelarus.

"Actually, in many respects, the devaluation scared the people away, as they started thinking, well, and decided not to take risk, despite the high blessing", the “Amkodor”’s ex-president added.

Vasily Shlyndikov noted that even Chinese investors are wary of investments in Belarusan projects. "But they are obviously guided by others, dominating geopolitical interests, and these interests are above concerns and risks. Herewith they are, as we see, very cautious. I somehow do not see a big number of investments from the Chinese side. In fact, there are only assurances", he said.

Working on improving the various ratings of investment attractiveness, in the expert’s opinion, is no more than "a waste of money".

"I have not seen any country with a similar regime of management where foreign investments would flourish", concluded Vasily Shlyndikov, noting that in such conditions "only pointed projects" could be successfully implemented.

Let’s recall that recently the Belarusan authorities have once again demonstrated their attitude to investors, actually having nationalized the "Spartac" and "Kommunarka" confectionery companies.