English

Lukashenka orders government to make more effort to get idle public properties into productive use

 

Alyaksandr Lukashenka suggested Friday at a government meeting that more effort should be made to get idle public properties and facilities into productive use.

The Belarusian leader noted that there were a lot of idle properties and unused opportunities to start a production business at well-prepared industrial sites with developed infrastructure. "But we still don't use these opportunities to a sufficient extent," he said. "In fact, you have failed to carry out my order to bring idle public properties into economic use."

In 2012, out of 3,837 idle properties controlled by local governments and 1,008 idle properties controlled by the central government, only 1,664 (43.5 percent) and 500, respectively, were made productive, Mr. Lukashenka said.

"We had agreed that this work would be finished in 2012," he said. "The [regional] governors and ministers were responsible for it. I did everything that the governors and the government had asked me to do, in particular, to debureaucratize this work, allow [a property] to be sold at a price equal to the Base Rate, empower the governors and the prime minister to do whatever they want with those properties. But they failed to do what they had agreed to do. What was the reason?"

If government officials cannot bring idle properties into productive use on their own, they should give them away to those who can, Mr. Lukashenka suggested. // BelaPAN