Meeting with First Vice Premier Nikolai Snopkov, Minister of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade Vladimir Koltovich

The government bodies need to show well-coordinated work in protecting the domestic market and interests of national producers, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko said as he met with First Vice Premier Nikolai Snopkov and Minister of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade Vladimir Koltovich to hear their reports on 1 April.

“The protection of the domestic market and national producers is the number one issue. We are a producing country, although our market is small. We need to protect out market, of course, in a competitive manner. We must remember our obligations within the Eurasian economic space. However, there are big questions to the authorities, which should control and take appropriate measures to protect the domestic market and our manufacturers,” the Belarusian leader stressed.

Aleksandr Lukashenko added that this and some other issues had been raised by the Belarusian manufacturers themselves. "Therefore, I assumed that the government would prepare a number of appropriate measures, first of all to protect the domestic market and national producers. There is no need for us to hide anything here. We produce a huge range of consumer goods today. We can't see this assortment in some of our so-called supermarkets and stores. It even came to the point that some of them (the law enforcement agencies are looking into the matter) simply refused to sell Belarusian goods,” the head of state said.

“I will not name them, those companies. It's a pity, however, that it was not you, Vladimir Vasilyevich [Koltovich] who informed the President. This shows that the instructions I have given to you, first of all to the trade unions and deputies (of course, we do not exclude the government from this list), are not executed properly and competently. Such things should be simply ruled out,” said the Belarusian leader.

Aleksandr Lukashenko was also interested in the issue related to critical imports: “What is it in our conditions, what is the situation, and what needs to be done?”