OREANDA-NEWS. December 12, 2012. Belarus will hardly reach the USD 2.5 billion privatization target in 2012, Belarus’ Premier Mikhail Myasnikovich told reporters Friday.

There is no tragedy about the fact that Belarus will not be able to meet the 2012 privatization target and earn USD 2.5 billion in privatization proceeds, the premier said.

“We have other instruments to keep up the necessary level of the country’s gold and foreign currency reserves,” Myasnikovich said.

Some officials and businessmen have a wrong idea of privatization as a means of “getting money for assets once created by the whole nation,” the premier said.

“We consider privatization as diversification of the production sector, as the integration into transnational corporations. This is not a mechanism to earn money and use to cover some immediate expenses. We do not rely on privatization proceeds alone to fill the state budget. We have produced a budget surplus this year even though privatization proceeds were way below the target,” Myasnikovich said.

Under the deal with the EurAsEC Financial Bailout Fund, which helped Belarus avert economic collapse, Minsk pledged to sell USD 2.5 billion worth of state assets a year for three years. Since then, it has sold its gas pipeline network to Russia's Gazprom. To receive the fifth tranche of the loan to the tine of USD 440 million, Belarus is supposed to meet the target by February 28, 2012 at the latest.

Belarus, hit by a financial crisis in 2011, agreed with the fund to receive a USD 3 billion stabilizing loan to be disbursed in several tranches from 2011 to 2013.

The fund has already disbursed USD 800 million and two tranches each worth USD 440 million. The third tranche was received in July 2012 and immediately registered as foreign exchange and gold reserves.