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Belarus ECONOMY
General Character: Extremely centralized.
Government
efforts to privatize and establish market economy weak.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP): In 1992 about
US$30.3
billion; real growth rate -10 percent. Agriculture
accounted for
23 percent of GDP, industry for 38 percent, and other
sectors for
39 percent.
Agriculture: Mainly state and collective farms;
sprinkling of small plots for private household use.
Primary
crops: fodder, potatoes, wheat, barley, oats, buckwheat,
potatoes, flax, and sugar beets. Cattle, hogs, and sheep
raised.
Industry: Machine- and instrument-building
(especially
tractors, large trucks, machine tools, and automation
equipment),
petrochemicals, plastics, synthetic fibers, fertilizer,
processed
food, glass, and textiles.
Minerals: Small deposits of iron ore, nonferrous
metal
ores, dolomite, potash, rock salt, phosphorites,
refractory clay,
molding sand, sand for glass production, and various
building
materials.
Energy: Primary energy sources: twenty-two
thermal
power plants (total capacity 7,033 megawatts), additional
small
power plants (total capacity 188 megawatts), and nine
small
hydroelectric power plants (total capacity six megawatts).
Country's power grid connected to grids of Lithuania,
Russia,
Ukraine, and Poland. Almost totally dependent on Russia
for all
oil, coal, and natural gas needed to fuel electric-power
generation plants.
Foreign Trade: In 1994 about 84 percent of
foreign
trade conducted with other members of Commonwealth of
Independent
States. Imports: natural gas, oil and gas condensate,
diesel
fuel, mazut, wheat, corn, and sugar. Exports: crude and
processed
oil, heavy machinery, diesel fuel, mazut, chemical and
mineral
fertilizers, televisions, trucks, tractors, refrigerators
and
freezers, meat, and milk.
Fiscal Year: Calendar year.
Exchange Rate: In March 1995, 11,669 rubles per
US$1.
Data as of June 1995
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