OREANDA-NEWS. Russia should not force Belarus to sell state-owned companies to investors, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday in his annual address to the nation and the parliament.

“The IMF, the West, the European Union, and now Russia keep singing the same song today: go ahead with privatization, sell state-owned companies. I have already provided an answer to that question: we don’t mind selling any enterprise, but for an adequate price. So there is no need to force us, especially for our partners and brothers,” Lukashenko said.

“Why should they stop forcing us to speed up privatization? The answer is that the market is now at its lowest point, with companies being sold on the cheap. We will not do that. We will come back to these matters as soon as the market situation gets back to normal,” the Belarusian president said.

“If anybody wants to use the situation to their own benefit in order to ruin the country, I am out,” Lukashenko said.