OREANDA-NEWS. On 08 June 2009 was announced, that Belarusian branch ministries must focus on exports, Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky said during a government session that addressed the economic performance of the country in January-April 2009.

Sidorsky said GDP grew 1.1% year-on-year in January-April, and was expected to grow further in May owing to the service sector and retail sales. “These sectors depend on our work inside the country and the financial crisis does not impede this progress,” Sidorsky said.

He said housing completion was at 25% of the target for the year in January-April, or at 1.5 million square meters.

“We must reach 60% of the target in the first six months. We won’t suspend any site – if you need help, you will get it to complete construction projects that were started before the crisis. We have set ourselves an ambitious task of building 9 million square meters of housing facilities this year,” Sidorsky said.

He also called on ministries to reduce inventories.

“We have agreed that we won’t be chasing production targets, because we don’t need good indicators for the sake of figures, despite the immediate profits that Bellesbumprom and the Industry Ministry want to get. We have 7 trillion Belarusian rubles’ worth of goods in stock – an increase by 191 billion rubles in April alone. We resumed sales in March, which is a good indicator, but we need to sell more than we produce now to compensate for the November-February slump. Exports must become the chief priority,” Sidorsky said.

“We have agreed to support large producers, we provided financial support to automobile companies and farms; we have paid for next year’s products from the agriculture support fund – and we need top quality and timely deliveries to processing companies. Over 400 billion rubles of innovation funds have been extended to the companies involved in investment projects. Ministers must collect innovation products so that they work in construction, road building and other innovation productions,” the premier said.