slash
state credits and consumer subsidies in order to bring down the budget
deficit and reduce inflation. However, despite its promising start,
the regime's drive to reinvigorate the economy has fallen short, and
the IMF has criticized its failure to implement the reforms that the
Fund had negotiated. As a result, the IMF has suspended talks on
introducing a stand-by arrangement. Economic relations with Russia,
which will have an important bearing on the future course of the
economy, will be strengthened if Minsk adopts the necessary
legislation to implement a customs union agreed to in January 1995.

National product: GDP - purchasing power parity - $53.4 billion (1994
estimate as extrapolated from World Bank estimate for 1992)

National product real growth rate: -20% (1994)

National product per capita: $5,130 (1994 est.)

Inflation rate (consumer prices): 29% per month (1994)

Unemployment rate: 1.4% officially registered unemployed (December
1993); large numbers of underemployed workers

Budget:
revenues: $NA
expenditures: $NA, including capital expenditures of $NA

Exports: $968 million to outside of the FSU countries (f.o.b., 1994)
commodities: machinery and transport equipment, chemicals, foodstuffs
partners: Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria

Imports: $534 million from outside the FSU countries (c.i.f., 1994)
commodities: fuel, natural gas, industrial raw materials, textiles,
sugar
partners: Russia, Ukraine, Poland

External debt: $1.5 billion (July 1994 est.)

Industrial production: growth rate -19% (1994); accounts for about 40%
of GDP (1992)

Electricity:
capacity: 7,010,000 kW
production: 31.4 billion kWh
consumption per capita: 3,010 kWh (1994)

Industries: employ about 40% of labor force and produced a wide
variety of products including (in percent share of total output of
former Soviet Union): tractors (12%); metal-cutting machine tools
(11%); off-highway dump trucks up to 110-metric-ton load capacity
(100%); wheel-type earthmovers for construction and mining (100%);
eight-wheel-drive, high-flotation trucks with cargo capacity of 25
metric tons for use in tundra and roadless areas (100%); equipment for
animal husbandry and livestock feeding (25%); motorcycles (21.3%);
television sets (11%); chemical fibers (28%); fertilizer (18%); linen
fabric (11%); wool fabric (7%); radios; refrigerators; and other
consumer goods

Agriculture: accounts