Russia Wants Belarusian Enterprises Instead of Promises
Originally published at Belarus Digest. Please leave any comments there.
On 13 December, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev proclaimed that Russia and Belarus may introduce a single currency. Various officials from both countries have regularly proclaimed such intentions since 1993.
There has been no result to these back and forth in the past two decades, yet officials apparently have more interest in the process than in outcomes. Integration talk hides the reality of the diverging developmental paths of two nations.
The results of bilateral relations are far from ideal as the decline by eleven percent in volume of Belarus-Russian trade illustrates. According to Medvedev, trade diminished due to negative processes in global markets. Indeed, declines might be a result of Russian policy. This is especially true after Russia's one-sided accession to the WTO took goods from cheap-labour countries squeezed out Belarusian goods from Russian markets.
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