Public sector and civil servants are budget cut targets

According to draft legislation, as of January 1^st, 2014 the Supreme Economic Court will merge with the Supreme Court, and Economic courts will become part of general jurisdiction courts system.

The so-called ‘improvements’ made by the authorities to the judiciary follow the overall trend of cutting budgetary expenditures. The authorities do not intend to review the current socio-economic policy in the short and medium term. They hope to preserve the existing model in a truncated form, by reducing the number of civil servants and cutting related costs.

The authorities’ plans to improve the work of the judiciary do not envisage drastic changes in the legal system. The changes will not affect the quality of justice in Belarus which would require increasing the judiciary’s independence and credibility.

The ‘judicial reform’ primarily aims to reduce budgetary expenditure on the judiciary – firstly on the administrative apparatus. President Alexander Lukashenko said “we have to achieve a significant reduction in the number of administrative staff. We have few judges as it is.”

Earlier in 2013, within the ‘administrative reform’ some budgetary cuts were made for certain categories of civil servants and public sector employees. In H1 2013 about 30 % of public officials were laid off, which allowed salaries to be increased for the remaining employees. According to the National Statistics Committee, in July due to lay-offs, public officials’ wages were increased by 43%.

The ‘administrative reform’ also affected teachers and other education professionals. They are forced to work more (from 18 to 20 hours per week), but their salaries have increased only by 3%.

Salaries of those employed by the Belarusian Rail Road were cut by 10%, and their working hours reduced to 35 hours per week. Employees are also advised to take unpaid leave.

Deputy Finance Minister Maxim Ermolovich said, that “over 1 million people are paid from the state budget, we won’t hold it out, therefore optimization is objectively necessary. It is already underway. The army and the police are included in this optimization.”

In addition, the authorities continue to cut costs on “social” budget items. Transport, housing and communal services tariffs are gradually going up. Small price increases on various goods and services subsidized from the state budget occur every month.

In the absence of external funding, authorities will continue to cut some expenditure items. They will do it gradually so as not to cause tension in society and open expressions of discontent. Meanwhile, the likelihood that President Alexander Lukashenko will agree on structural economic or social or institutional reforms is extremely low.