The department of ideology, which has a branch in every state-owned company, started a new campaign of convincing factory employees to pay in dollars into their bank accounts. The campaign is supposed to help domestic banks.
A journalist of “Nasha Niva” received information from various Minsk factories, that employees were told that due to an upcoming change of banknotes in the U.S. they should to pay in all their dollars into bank accounts. Otherwise money will lose its value.
According to Belarusian government estimates, people have about $11 billion, which they are reluctant to deposit in commercial or state-owned banks, as they expect a major financial crisis in a near future. Therefore the authorities decided to lie to their own citizens, hoping that people will be unable to verify this information.
Currency reserves in Belarus have melted in May to a level threatening stability of the financial system. The National Bank decided to conduct almost 60% ruble devaluation. However, it was still to little to restore presence of foreign money in currency exchange offices. There are still long lines to buy euro or dollars in Belarus.
Belarusian ideological services seem to forget that on the contrary to the Soviet Union, the United States has never conducted an exchange of banknotes on a mass scale – until today one can pay with dollars emitted at any point of the existence of the USA. Hence, the ideological services’ scheme has a big chance of failing.
Michał Janczuk (TV Belsat)
