MOSCOW, January 12 (Itar-Tass) — The Bellegprom state concern and private companies are planning to increase their exports to Russia. It became so profitable to produce that Russian businesspeople began to press their Belarusian counterparts in their own country.
The Belarusian rouble devaluation became profitable for the Belarusian garment business. Due to the devaluation of the domestic currency the salaries dropped sharply in the industry. If the average salary of a seamstress was equivalent to 300 dollars, the average salary of a dress designer made 1000-1500 dollars, now the salary went down 2.5 times. Electric power tariffs and the rates of the public utilities also became cheaper, the petrol prices dropped.
A greater part of private clothes business is concentrated in Brest, where more than 400 registered companies operate. Another 100 companies are illegal. The clothes factories also operate in Grodno. Almost all of them make women’s clothes. Almost all of them sell their products through mediators at the marketplaces in Moscow. This business is profitable: the wholesale price for a piece of clothes is about twice higher than its cost price, the director of a Brest clothes factory said. No one sees any sense in the development of other sales markets, he said. Private businesspeople said that the demand went up 30-50% in the previous year. The sales just skyrocketed after a loss-making smog-stricken summer of 2010. “Now this is the time of luck for us,” the owner of a Grodno company said, noting that “only those who cannot observe any quality standards are not needed.”