English

Lukashenka speaks at national end-of-harvest festival

Dazhynki 2010, a national annual end-of-harvest festival, was held this past weekend in Lida, a city of 100,000 residents in the Hrodna region, BelaPAN reports.

The festival was mainly intended to honor the districts, farms, crews and individual machine operators who had achieved the best results in agriculture and harvesting. The first national-level Dazhynki festival, initiated by Mr. Lukashenka, took place in Stolin, Brest region, in 1996. Since then, the festival has been held annually in various district capitals.

Belarus will increase the export of agricultural and farming products at least two times in the next few years, Alyaksandr Lukashenka said in his speech at Dazhynki 2010.

The government has set itself the goal of increasing the export to between $7 billion and $10 billion a year by 2015, the Belarusian leader said.

At present Belarus “supplies not only itself but also a number of other countries, even those that were once considered granaries,” Mr. Lukashenka said. “Today the demand for food is as high as for no other product. Belarusian products are in demand in various regions globally. They are competitive in price and quality. Now the most important thing for us is not to miss this chance and make the maximum efficient use of the current economic situation, expanding the geography of export sales and establishing ourselves in market niches. It’s necessary to earn the maximum possible income from what we have. This is our hydrocarbons.”

This year “there is no food either westward or southward of Belarus,” Mr. Lukashenka said. “This year God hasn’t favored Europe either. If we had not busied ourselves with farming a decade ago, we would kneel and beg now. Actually, there is no one to beg [for food], probably except God. It’s impossible to buy anything from anyone today. That’s why the fact that we at one time started to take care of the peasant unexpectedly gave an amazing effect this year.”

This year’s harvest was not the largest ever, “but we got enough to supply ourselves, sell decent amounts outside the country and earn hard currency,” Mr. Lukashenka said.