Economic sector
Strong character is good for the cause Machine-building is a strong feature of the Belarusian economy. Tens of thousands of tractors, trucks, thousands of combines and buses, as well as passenger transport and electric transport are produced annually. Most of it is exported. In an externally oriented economy, the industry remains a reliable basis of the national budget, bringing billions of dollars in revenue to the country and providing thousands of Belarusians with well-paid jobs. The following article is about the development of this trend.
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BELGEE is perhaps the youngest brand in the country’s ma‑ chine-building industry. To get on to the wheels and to gain full speed for several years became possible due to the principle of cooperation which is now applied by many world manufacturers. The main partner and supplier of components for the domestic en‑ terprise is China, which, in turn, uses the technology of the Swed‑ ish firm Volvo. And then, as they say, everything is in our hands. For two years of serial production of cars the level of localization exceeded 50 percent. And this is a vivid example of caring for one’s own future, says Gennady Svidersky, director of the joint venture BELGEE: — Borisov has an engine plant, where complete assembly is made. The BELAZ-SERVICE enterprise produces rear and front axles. There is a factory of radiators, a factory of seats. In other words, the full cycle of the plant iscomplemented by the supply of the main components from the Belarusian enterprises. If today we make a car on a full technological cycle, i. e. produce welding, painting, testing, assembly, plastic and metal parts, all these plants have a large reserve for localization. The development of our own production in the field of passenger car industry is a question of the future of the company. First of all, the fulfillment of localization conditions is the possibility of duty-free sales in the EAEU markets. Today, the task has been set to develop
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the domestic workload. This will ensure a high level of performance and, as a result, develop the same cooperation network that has al‑ ready been established for trucks, tractors and road equipment. One workplace at BELGEE, for example, can provide 7 more workplaces at related industries, service and support. The situation in the machine-building industry should be radically corrected, said Alexander Lukashenko at a meeting on the strategy of the industry development in November 2016. Ma‑ chine-building has always been in the focus of attention of the government, but it got under special control when five years ago it considerably subsided due to the fall of the world market, And it must be said that the state managed to preserve this sector of in‑ dustry, despite the difficult transition phase. But we must move on. By the way, at the Minsk Automobile Plant among more than half a thousand models, today there are new types of Euro‑5 and Euro‑6 standards not only for the Western European market, but also for the neighboring countries. The bulk of designers are work‑ ing on expanding the model range, one of the priorities is on the development of a new family of buses. Testbed vehicles are already ready, for example, model 303 and the electric bus on its basis. As the engineers themselves say, it is absolutely useless to copy some‑ one, for specific markets we are developing target vehicles that are competitive in their technical characteristics.
