Lukashenka's Gravid With Ideas

Cast-iron logic.

By April, the government should decide on how to regulate prices in Belarus in a new way. Having failed to make up its mind by February and March. The reason is that the people are different and everyone has his own proposal. And Lukashenka only gets gravid with ideas from these different opinions. He wants something strange, and there is no one to understand Lukashenka, what exactly he wants.

Track Instead of Corridors

A month ago, Prime Minister Raman Halouchanka boasted that the system of price regulation was basically ready. Instead of price regulation, Raman Halouchanka promised to introduce price corridors, whatever these price corridors could possibly mean. However, it turned out that price corridors are not our method either. Our method is a track.

‘They are sitting, inventing some formula, and everyone has their own opinion in their head. The President has set a task and drawn the track, from which you can't jump out... Do it,’ Lukashenka said at the meeting on Friday.

That is, he gave the government a specific instruction on what prices are supposed to be like in Belarus. As specific as last time, the time before last and the time before that, when he explained to the government about fair prices.

Instead, they come up with all sorts of formulas, approaches, opinions, Congress, Germans. They only make one's head gravid. What you should do is just go to go and make fair prices. And what's the main thing in fair prices? The main thing is that they should be fair.

Therefore, ‘there should not be rigid methods of regulation, so as not to harm the economy.’ Because the ‘price control should be maintained’. And if it appears that the government does not want to control prices, then it may not control them, ‘your business’. They will just ‘answer with their heads’ if something with prices suddenly goes wrong. In short, what's not clear? It's the cast-iron logic.

For a unique socially-oriented model needs a unique pricing system. And ordinary pricing systems don't fit a unique model.

‘As I thought quite a sane person, Inna Medvedzeva (head of Belstat)... suddenly writes to me that pricing depends on supply and demand,’ said Lukashenka indignantly. ‘That's what it is. It turns out that the price depends on supply and demand’.

Indeed, somewhere, where economic practice does not disagree with economic theories, the price may depend on supply and demand. However, in the unique socially-oriented model, ‘this classical formula is subject to a small correction’. Because price in it depends on fairness.

And I'm Going to Explain to You How Much a Cucumber Costs

Let's say Lukashenka doesn't mind if the government suddenly lets the avocado prices go. Because I ‘don't understand and don't like avocados’. But if they let prices for potatoes go, he will be against it. Well, apparently, because Lukashenka likes and understands potatoes.

However, the Ministry of Trade complains that this approach to price regulation makes Belarusian goods lose their positions in Belarusian shops. The reason is that it is more profitable to sell imported goods, for which prices are less regulated. But this explanation is for weaklings. Those who follow the bourgeois pseudoscience of economics. Lukashenka has a better explanation.

‘You have built a system where it is more profitable to bring imported goods into trade than to sell your own. It's a mess! What kind of regulation is this, this is corruption. What importer, who is bringing goods from Egypt or Russia, Kazakhstan, did you want to play into the hands?’ said Lukashenka.

And in order to make Belarusian cucumber not cost as much as imported avocado, it is necessary to reduce production costs. Well, how to reduce it? Not to include associated costs in the cost price. And if a company needs a new car, it is its personal problems. Goods can be delivered to customers by a cart pulled by a gelding.

After all, who needs complicated formulas when there are simple solutions. Lukashenka, for example, has a greenhouse and three times a day observes ‘how tomatoes and cucumbers are growing’. And feeds the government with these cucumbers.

‘We can bring down prices in this way. If you don't believe me, next time I'll bring you two boxes of my cucumbers and tomatoes,’ he said.

So the system of price regulation in Belarus is good. Only it works badly. Therefore, the system of price regulation should be changed. Only it's not clear in what way.

Andrei Branisheuski, planbmedia.io

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