Finance Minister: Oil at $83 per barrel budgeted in Belarus for 2015


Mechanisms are available to compensate for the losses of Belarus’ state budget caused by falling oil prices, state-run news agency BelTA learned from Belarusian Finance Minister Uladzimir Amarin on Thursday.

The budget bill expects oil to sell at $83 per barrel. “If reality gets worse than that, we have mechanisms in place to compensate for that,” noted the Finance Minister. “We understand that the oil price is lower than that but nobody can say what the oil price will be in 2015.”

As it was reported earlier that in 2015 Belarus’ state budget is expected to earn over $2 billion in oil export duties. The money will be spent on repaying the foreign-currency state debt.

The draft national budget for 2015 passed the first reading in the House of Representatives (Lower Chamber of the Belarusian parliament) today. According to the draft, the budget revenues in 2015 will amount to Br156.7 trillion, up 27.4% over 2014, expenses will total Br141 trillion (up 12.4%). Thus the budget surplus will be at the level of Br15.7 trillion.

www.belsat.eu/en

TWITTER