Opening address of editor-in-chief.

“Whatever problems arise in the process of searching for common approaches in the current agenda of the Union construction, there won’t be any landslide processes”, said the Chairman of the Representatives’ Chamber of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus, First Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia Vladimir Pavlovich Andreichenko. “Our countries have created such cooperation mechanisms that allow them to solve effectively all the problems”. In his interview to the “Economic Strategies” magazine he dwells on the above.

The Russian-Belarusian relations in early 2017 have revealed a cascade of increasing conflicts and claims — these include the unresolved problems in the oil and gas sector between Russia and Belarus, the decelerated movement for providing Belarusian products with the status of “national” in the Russian market, claims to Russia on the EAEU sites… “Economic Strategies” magazine in its special issue makes an attempt to change this background and in the interview with Anatoly Gennadievich Aksakov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Markets — to identify the facets of Belarusian-Russian cooperation in a constructive way.

In 2017, the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus will keep a balanced monetary policy, the main goal of which is to reduce inflation to an unambiguous level — non higher than 9 percent, and will continue to implement systemic measures for ensuring financial stability, including through a number of initiatives aimed at reducing the problematic debt of banks, reduction of directive lending, creation of conditions for accelerated development of non-banking segments of the financial market. Activities of the National Bank of Belarus aimed at ensuring macroeconomic balance, implementation of a number of important changes in the field of monetary and foreign exchange policy, the way the bank manages market risks in the current economic situation were discussed by the Board Chairman of the National Bank of the Belarus Republic Pavel Vladimirovich Kallaur in his interview with the “ES” magazine.

According to Vladimir Gusakov, chairman of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, declaring 2017 as the Year of Science is symbolic, as this year marks the 95th anniversary of opening in the republic of the Belarusian Culture Institute, on the basis of which the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus was later established. Over the past five years, the NAS scientists have prepared more than a thousand innovative projects, interdisciplinary research centers and scientific-technological clusters of research and strategic nature, created on the basis of the Belarus NAS, have started to work, scientific-production associations have been created in the most promising directions. International cooperation is actively developing as well — only in 2016 the NAS offices were visited by more than a thousand foreign delegations, over two and a half thousand foreign trips of academic scientists were undertaken, including internships in the world’s leading scientific centers, about one hundred international scientific and technical conferences were held. In his interview with the “ES” magazine the Presidium chairman of the Belarus National Academy of Sciences, academician Vladimir Grigoryevich Gusakov told about how the Year of Science in the Republic of Belarus will contribute to developing domestic scientific schools, university and branch science, to multiplying scientific potential, to supporting talented young scientists and specialists.

OJSC BelVEB Bank, part of the Russian group Vnesheconombank, thanks to a carefully thought-out management policy, is a universal credit and financial institution and holds leading positions among the banks of the Republic of Belarus in the field of international settlements, foreign exchange operations and servicing foreign economic activity of the state and clients. Nikolai Vladimirovich Luzgin, Chairman of the Board of OJSC “BelVEB Bank”, in his interview with the “ES” magazine spoke about the main strategic goals of the BelVEB Bank, its key activities, including implementation of the Russian-Belarusian integration projects, about its univers and client-oriented character, about economic potential of the country.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant is being built near the town of Ostrovets in the Grodno region, 50 kilometers from Vilnius. It will consist of two VVER-1200 power units with a total electrical capacity of up to 2,400 megawatts. For NPP construction, the NPP-2006 project was chosen — a typical Russian project of the new generation nuclear power plan 3+ with improved technical-economic characteristics, meeting the latest safety standards, environmental and sanitary legislation requirements. Construction director of the Belarusian NPP — chief of AS AS “ASE” representative office in the Republic of Belarus Dmitry Vladimirovich Romanets in the interview with “ES” magazine told about large-scale Russian-Belarusian construction project.

Modern humanity is increasingly occupied with the efforts associated with overcoming various crisis phenomena arising in the course of terrestrial civilization’s development. Ensuring the environment protection and the safety of citizens is becoming of great importance. In the light of the increasing number of natural and man-made disasters, issues of industrial safety at all stages of a hazardous object’s lifecycle come to the fore. Implementation of state supervision in the field of industrial safety and security of dangerous goods transportation is the main task of the Department for Supervision of Safe Work in Industry under the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Republic of Belarus (Gospromnadzor). The past 2016th year is marked by an important event for the department — a 60-years anniversary. That year was quite tough for Gospromnadzor employees, but the team managed to cope with important tasks, from the successful solution of which the state of industrial safety in the country directly depends. First of all, they managed to keep the dynamics of reducing accidents and injuries at supervised units and production facilities. In addition, implementing the Law of the Republic of Belarus dated January 5, 2016 “On Industrial Safety”, 11 by-laws were developed and approved. In parallel, amendments and additions to the rules for ensuring industrial safety were introduced. In an interview with the “ES” magazine the head of the State Industrial Supervision Alexander Kudryashov told about how they managed to maintain positive statistics and to be a guarantor of the safety of people’s lives and health.

The first foreign office of the Russian Agency for Export Credit and Investment Insurance (EXIAR) opened in Minsk in September 2015 with the goal of effectively promoting development of trade and economic ties between Belarus and Russia through interaction with importers, financial institutions, associations and Russian companies present on the market Of Belarus. In the interview with “ES” magazine Victor Viktorovich Doronkevich, head of the JSC “EXIAR” Representative Office in the Republic of Belarus, told about opportunities for Belarusian and Russian companies and banks, appeared after opening of the representative office in Minsk, about the advantages of cooperation with EXIAR as well as about joint Russian-Belarusian export projects.

In order to solve the most important problems of scientific-technical and innovation development of the Republic of Belarus the President approves the priority directions of scientific and technical activities. It is planned that in the 2016–2020 priority will be given to power engineering and energy efficiency, nuclear energy; agroindustrial technologies and production; industrial and building technologies and production; Healthcare, pharmacy, medical equipment; chemical technologies, petrochemistry; bio- and nano-industry; information-communication and aerospace technologies; rational nature management and deep processing of natural resources; national security and defense, protection against emergencies. On the basis of these priorities national programs of different levels are formed and partial financing of these programs from the national budget is carried out.