Government aims to raise salaries by abolishing productivity requirement

May 24, BPN. The Belarusian government’s key task this year is to create conditions for a rise in workers’ salaries, First Deputy Prime Minister Mikałaj Snapkoŭ has told lawmakers in Minsk.

“For this purpose, we have temporarily suspended the mandatory requirement” for productivity to outpace salaries, the parliament’s press office quoted Snapkoŭ as saying. He added that profitable organizations were free to set pay levels.

Earlier, any pay rises were impossible without productivity increases of at least equal proportions. 

Nominal gross average pay of workers in March was 1,814 rubels (over $700), up 7.49 percent from February.

It amounted to 1,916 rubels in December and 1,685 rubels in January.

The BEROC think tank forecast last month that take-home pay will rise by 8 percent this year, but its rise is to slow down to around two percent in 2024, “which corresponds to the nominal gross average pay of about 1,858 rubels in 2023 and 2,062 rubels in 2024.”