MINSK, Belarus - The Belarusian state today does not have resources that could be channeled to compensate private savings at Soviet-era Sberbank frozen in 1991, Finance Minister Andrei Kharkovets has said.
“The government and National Bank don’t have plans today to compensate Soviet-era deposits. We don’t have the resources for such a giant job,” he said answering a question from minority shareholders of Belarusbank in Minsk on Wednesday.
Quoting expert estimates he said that tens of trillions of Belarusian rubles would be needed to compensate for the frozen deposits.
He said that considering the risks remaining in the Belarusian economy the compensation of Soviet-era savings could become a destabilizing factor. “This would be an element of threat to macroeconomic stability when money that was not earned today appears on people’s accounts. This could provoke another round of inflation and cause the repetition of what happened two years ago,” Kharkovets said. The minister is sure that “there definitely will be no such plans in the next year or two.”
He also dismissed the idea of compensation of deposits through the distribution of Belarusian commodities for a corresponding sum. He said that such a proposal also imply the unplanned issue of cash. “Today the state cannot assign funds for the compensation of savings from its earnings,” he said.
In addition, compensation would require a political decision. “Compensation requires a political decision. Today there is no such political decision. Secondly, there should be an economic decision. And in my opinion, if such decisions are made, the compensation should be conducted indiscriminately without singling out individual categories,” the minister said.
