What threatens the introduction of new groups in Belarus
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Despite the fact that Belarus is refusing aggressive intentions towards Ukraine, its position in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has led to the fact that the appeal previously adopted against our country by the EU and the US has been significantly expanded.
Be in the wrong company
As before, a part has a personal focus and includes persons who, according to the US and the EU, are involved in the implementation of the “act of aggression” against Ukraine. For example, the sanctions list announced by the US Department of the Treasury on February 24 included 24 Belarusian individuals and legal entities. In addition, targeted restrictions apply to Belinvestbank OJSC, Dabrabyt Bank, as well as the borders of defense industry enterprises.
A few days later (March 2), the US Department of Commerce through its Bureau of Production and Security (BIS) conducts strict export controls on Belarus. According to the document, the United States prohibits the export of technologies and software in the defense, aerospace and maritime sectors to the republic. Previously, the same meetings were held in relation to the Russian Federation.
The Belarusian Foreign Ministry commented on the introduction of the new portion by the United States as follows: “Official Washington continues to escalate processes on a large scale and spread fakes to justify new sanctions against the Republic of Belarus, while in“. The Foreign Ministry once again confirmed that Belarus “not to accept, not to accept and not to take part in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine“, and also obliged”an adequate response to any sanctions attacks“.
More times, less loopholes
Even more serious steps
accepted applied, which joined the personal sanctions (22 representatives of the law enforcement agencies of Belarus, in particular, representatives of the Ministry of Defense, were included in the lists) introduced strict sectoral restrictions. The official reason given in the opposition is “participation in unacceptable and illegal actions of the Russian military, which are a consequence of the law of an act of aggression by Belarus“.
New locked cover”trade in goods often used in the manufacture or production of tobacco products, industrial fuels, bituminous inclusions and gaseous hydrocarbon products, potassium chloride (“potassium”) products, wood products, cement products, iron and steel products, and rubber products“. Thus, cases of woodworking, wood, steel and iron, which account for almost 40% of all Belarusian exports to the EU, were found in the new sanctions lists of “target” exceptions.
In addition, the decision to open a loophole in relation to the export of potash fertilizers. According to the EU representatives, only 20% of proposals are covered with “soft” estimates, while the new measures will completely block this high intensity for Belarusian exports of goods. In total, according to the EU, extended sanctions
affected more than 70% of the Belarusian export volume, the total volume of which last year amounted to 5.9 billion euros.
The games are over – they will hit hard
Financial boundaries have been significantly expanded. Since March 3, 2022, capital market sanctions have been tightened against Belarus, its state bodies and five banks. The use of funds or payments under contracts concluded before June 25, 2021 is no longer assigned. The provision of insurance or reinsurance to the Government of the Republic of Belarus, its state bodies or state legal entities acting on their behalf or at their direction, under an agreement concluded before June 25, 2021, is permitted. Related technical assistance, intermediation, financing or financial assistance (including financial derivatives, insurance and reinsurance) is also prohibited.
At the same time, the completion time for contracts concluded before March 2, 2022 was given quite a bit – until June 4, 2022. At the same time, it should be noted that the speed of execution of sanctions restrictions has increased significantly. Already on March 9, a week after the expansion of the sanctions package, it was decided to disconnect three Belarusian banks – Belagroprombank, Dabrabyt Bank and Development Bank from the Interbank Community of Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT).
At the same time, when the issue of disconnecting Belarusian banks from SWIFT was discussed earlier, the EU did not demonstrate such unanimity in its position on Belarus and tried to choose the most “soft” parameters of influence with a “point” effect. Now the EU has turned out to be empty in all seriousness, not particularly understanding the means and using the entire range of available opportunities, despite the fact that the private sectors and private citizens are starting to suffer more and more from the direction.
Another obvious change is the performance discipline in relation to closed meetings. If earlier “unfriendly” countries were identified that preliminarily read the EU and US regulations on the brakes and continued to serve the flow of sub-sanctioned goods (which was the same Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland sinned), now European countries are more of a united front, and strikebreakers remain less and less. This significantly narrows the possibilities for applying compensatory maneuvers.
By and large, Belarus is now even more dependent on the willingness of the Russian economy to buy assets, as the high cost and complexity of logistics increasingly turn economic cooperation with the countries of the “far arc” into a beautiful sign, which is increasingly hiding the negative balance of foreign trade and losing price environment.
Both above and below
And finally, the moment, it never happened before – the verdict is now subject to consideration not only “from above”, i.e. from the US and the EU, which accept various restrictions, but also “from below”, at the level of decisions of individual companies. Newspaper headlines are full of names of firms and brands that unilaterally decide on the full or partial consumption of their activities in Belarus and Russia.
No matter how hard we try, we cover and limit the image of the state, attract for investment, history decreed otherwise – Belarus expanded the scope of the country, chose for the placement of capital and implemented projects of the “green field”. This has not yet been reflected in the statistics, however, we are confident that by the end of 2022 we will see a record outflow of direct investment from the country and, first of all, foreign capital. And it will be difficult to reverse this process.
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Despite the fact that the introduction and opposition has long become commonplace for Belarusians, this time everything looks more serious. They are blocked from the appearance of a blow to the nature of the growth of foreign economic activity – the financial sector and foreign trade, which aggravates the situation with a sharp increase in the exchange rate of foreign currencies and the disruption of plans to develop growth due to the “foreign economic miracle”. However, this does not mean that the economy cannot survive. The question, most likely, is that this can lead to a long recovery.