Stanislau Bahdankevich: Belarus intensifies administrative control over its citizens

The initiatives introduced recently by the Belarusan authorities look like real sabotage.

Belarus’ tax authorities can get access to the information which represent banking secrecy. Tax authorities submitted this initiative to the Financial Ministry, which is developing changes to the Tax Code.

We are talking about the possibility to get information about currency exchange transactions. According to the representative of the Ministry of Taxes and Duties, this will help to “detect persons who purchase large amounts of foreign currency with no official sources of income”.

EuroBelarus Information Service asked Stanislau Bahdankevich, former head of the National Bank of Belarus to comment on this innovation.

- It seems to me that this new norm won’t be of much use. Belarus intensifies administrative control over its citizens: where money comes from, how much foreign currency is purchased and on what it is spent.

Belarusans already submit their passports when they buy foreign currency, and now this norm is being secured by law.

- What consequences can this decision bring?

- The black market currency might become more powerful; people will start hiding their incomes and expenses.

I believe that all state’s attempts of administrative control are not worth it. There is always a possibility to escape control.

- And is concealment of income popular among Belarusans?

- As long as double entry bookkeeping exists and salary is non-official, people will hide their income. Perhaps, this innovation will affect officials, businessmen, but it won’t change anything for common Belarusans.

I don’t think that tax evasion is typical for Belarus.

- The government abandoned the idea to introduce monopoly on import. Why was this idea born in the first place?

- It’s our ideology – to ban and to control. Our economy needs liberalization, and we only administer it. Such actions can only harm the economy. These decisions speak about low level of education that our authorities have. I don’t think that the government harms the economy on purpose; however, over the last months a lot of poor ideas were introduced...

- Indeed, over the last months Belarusan authorities generated a lot of weird ideas, which were later abandoned. What served as a reason for such “creativity”?

- It has to do with the crisis in the economy. We need to change the economic system, and the government only attempts to improve the administrative economic model instead. But this is a deadlock.

- If the government can’t cope with the economy it has to be dismissed.

- There is no sense in changing financial ministers if the economic model is not changed. Miasnikovich is good at his post of the financial minister, but under the authoritarian regime one person, who doesn’t want to change anything, takes all decisions.

We are accumulating loans and borrowings through government, state monopolies, and banks. We are living off credits and off Russian gas and oil preferences. And all this only accumulates public debt.