"Belaruskali Groans Over The Authorities' Decisions On Prices
- 9.05.2025, 11:06
The company complained that they could no longer "pull" the situation.
State support of agricultural enterprises sometimes leads to the fact that other companies suffer from it. A fresh example of such a situation has appeared.
Belaruskali is forced to sell fertilizers below cost price in the domestic market. As a result, the company has lost more than Br1.2 billion over eight years. This "Zerkalo" found out from the correspondence between the company's management and MART, in which the state-owned company asks permission to raise prices for its products.
Officials have been regulating the public sector for many years, and in recent years, this practice has been actively extended to the private sector. In fact, since October 2022, no enterprise of any form of ownership has had the right to raise prices unless it could prove that it really needed to do so. In April this year, the system was slightly changed, but companies - both production and trading - are still under pressure from these restrictions.
Besides general price regulation, officials strictly control everything related to agriculture - from the norms for the production of certain products to the prices at which they buy necessary goods and equipment. This is done, among other things, so that the troubled industry can at least pull out a little financially.
But these measures not only do not help the industry itself (the government is still constantly pouring money from the budget into it in various forms), they also hit other companies. Including those that are considered to be the most profitable. In particular, it concerns Belaruskali.
How the state enterprise suffered from the officials' decisions on prices
The editorial board has obtained several documents, in which the MART and the management of Belaruskali discuss the price issue for the company's products. One of them, addressed to the Minister of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade, who was then Alexei Bogdanov, and signed by now ex-general director of the state company Ivan Golovaty, talks about very solid shortages.
In it, Belaruskali asks to raise the cost of products on the domestic market. "Let-off prices for potash fertilizers, sold to agricultural producers, do not cover the company's economically justified production costs, so the company annually receives uncompensated losses," the letter says.
It also states that since July 1 last year, the cost of fine potassium chloride in the domestic market was Br186.6 per ton, while the granulated - Br235.4. At the same time, the cost of this product in the first case was 216.55 rubles, and in the second case - 253.84 rubles. That is, the organization was forced to sell its products cheaper than the amount it spends on its production.
As a result, in 2023 Belaruskali lost Br151.9 million in 2023, while in 6 months of 2024 - Br23.1 million. And since 2016, the company has lost more than Br1.2 billion on this.
The same document provides estimates that in 2025 Belaruskali will not be able to earn on the sale of its products to agricultural enterprises. Thus, it was obliged to sell small potassium chloride at Br233 per ton, while the cost of production of such a volume of fertilizer will be Br298.35.