Aleksandr Lukashenko meets with SCC Chairman Alexander Yakobson

Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko heard out a report from Chairman of the State Control Committee Alexander Yakobson on 24 March.

The meeting was focused on efforts of the working group led by Alexander Yakobson and tasked with studying problems in the Belarusian housing and utilities industry.

Aleksandr Lukashenko said: “It is a global task regarding the operation of the housing and utilities industry in our country. It is a very important matter for me and it is a sensitive issue for the people. We should learn the real price and compare it with the price for the housing and utilities services that we now offer to Belarusian households. We must know how much these services cost”.

“According to my information, even your initial approaches indicate that the prime costs in housing and utilities industry differ from what we imagined. You have found some mediators in the industry. It is inadmissible. Any mediation results in higher prices,” stressed the head of state.

Aleksandr Lukashenko remarked that problems in the housing and utilities industry should be revealed the way it had been done in the civil engineering industry. Agribusiness is another direction for the systemic analysis of existing drawbacks. An interagency working group led by Prime Minister of Belarus Mikhail Myasnikovich is now working on detecting and finding solutions for problems in this industry.

Alexander Yakobson told the President which areas they focus on in their work. In essence they are working to reduce the cost of housing and utility services, in particular, the state budget component by using money more rationally. “We are taking a number of measures. The share of payments by Belarusian households will become totally different in the general equation. Instead of asking people to pay more, we are reducing the costs,” said the Chairman of the State Control Committee.

Plans have been made to adopt a number of measures regarding the housing and utilities industry, including measures to differentiate payments, remove mediation, change the management structure, and recalculate standard service rates that have been unchanged since 2007. The recalculation of the standard services rates is supposed to be completed by 1 May, remarked Alexander Yakobson.

The Chairman of the State Control Committee also informed the Belarus President about the latest session of the boards of the State Control Committee of Belarus and the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation. The session was held to audit the effectiveness of spending of the budget of the UnionState of Belarus and Russia for implementing joint programs. Apart from that, a joint session of the boards of supreme financial auditing agencies of Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan took place some time ago. The session tabled results of the joint audit into the observance of the agreement on distributing import customs duties in the Customs Union. “It is a new direction of our work in the troika format. It is good that the supreme auditing agencies have done some work in the initial phase,” noted Aleksandr Lukashenko.