OREANDA-NEWS. Belarus plans to abandon government control over food prices in January 2015, Belarus' Vice Minister of Agriculture Liudmila Nizhevich told reporters.

The vice minister accentuated the point that the Government of Belarus currently exercises control over procurement prices in the sector of crop production. “As far as livestock production is concerned, we have free procurement prices,” the official said. At the same time, the vice minister admitted that there still exist restrictions on selling prices at processing companies, which makes it hard to let prices float overnight.

The Economy Ministry of Belarus has developed a plan for gradually raising selling prices and procurement prices in the framework of the government's agribusiness policy and in the spirit of international agreements in the framework of the Customs Union. The plan suggests that by January 2015 Belarus will change over to free selling prices.

The vice minister assured that the government would simultaneously take care to provide support for low-income households in order to minimize the negative impact of free selling prices on this social category.