OREANDA-NEWS. On November 26, 2008 At a session of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers Prime Minister of Belarus Sergei Sidorsky criticized the government agencies for the sluggishness in the work with foreign investors, reported the Official website www.government.by.

There is a lot of red tape in the work with investors, Sergei Sidorsky said. “The global financial crisis has exposed several problems, which points to the need to speed up the implementation of the instructions of the Government to raise foreign investment,” he said.

According to the Prime Minister, representatives of some foreign companies have to take several months to court our ministries and executive committees offering them their projects, and the Belarusian executives even take time to think over if these projects make economic sense”. The government bodies are not doing the real job. “They refer to either the lack of the sites for construction or the absence of legislation,” Sergei Sidorsky said.

According to him, at the beginning of the year everybody said that the situation with investment would improve by the end of the year, that the projects would start flowing in. Today the officials acknowledge that nothing works out. The target on attracting investment in the utilities industry is not being met. The oblast executive committees “toss” the statistical figures with a view to using the economic figures of the free economic zones to adjust the general growth indices.

The Premier criticized the Minsk City Council. He said only two large projects are underway. These are the construction of Minsk-Arena and the building of the opera threat. “What we have is the approximation of figures but not real projects,” he said.

During Belarus’ Investment Forum in London, Sergei Sidorsky met with 30 foreign investors who expressed the interest in working in Belarus and who propose concrete projects. The sides discussed, for instance, the construction of waste treatment plants. “At the same time, the Ministry of Municipal Housing Economy tells me that this issue should be studied thoroughly. When will we have real work?” the Prime Minister has addressed the chiefs of the government bodies.

According to him, the Economy Ministry should not deal with economic figures only. It should also know the situation at every and each company. The officials should have respect for the investor, Sergei Sidorsky highlighted.

According to the Prime Minister, red tape is inadmissible in the negotiations with the global auto giants who would like to work in Belarus. These investors offer to cooperate with MAZ, BelAZ but the Economy Ministry has been slow with the answer. No interest has been shown to the Korean investors, who offered projects to Integral and Horizont.

“We have missed out on many important opportunities. We need to speed up the work on attracting investment. We will not survive without investment, without new productions. We could have dozens times more than what we have now,” Sergei Sidorsky said.