Baby formula drought irks Belarus mothers - Chavez to blame?

Nov 15, 2007, 10:12 GMT

Minsk - Guaranteed supplies of low-cost powdered milk and baby formula have long been a priority for Belarus' authoritarian President Aleksander Lukashenko, a former collective farm boss and a canny judge of what it takes to maintain public support.

But now these products are disappearing from the shelves of state- run food stores - and consumers in the former Soviet republic are blaming, of all people, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

These days in Belarus, a package of baby formula or its replacement, high-fat powdered milk, must be obtained through the black market, or bartered for via friends and relatives. It used to be readily available, and cost a few cents a kilo.

Rumours are flying, working Belarusian mothers are irate, and memories of the economic chaos brought by the Soviet Union's break-up are being once again stirred.

State Bel-1 television has studiously ignored the national powdered milk shortage, but last week its news division touted a 'diplomatic breakthrough' in economic talks between Minsk and Venezuela.

As of December Belarus would export, as an initial shipment, 1,200 tonnes of Belarusian high-fat powdered milk to the oil-rich South American nation.

Trade with Venezuela is well-reported by Belarusian state-run media, in no small part because economic sanctions against Lukashenko's government has left Belarus with few economic partners beyond countries already in the international bad books.

Last month Lukashenko announced Belarusian engineers would prospect for oil in Venezuelan fields. This summer the news was Belarusian export to Venezuela of agricultural machinery and military night-vision scopes. And now it's milk.

'Our product as demonstrated by laboratory tests has met their (Venezuelan) standards,' declared a beaming Gerikh Markovskiy, director of the state-run dairy products concern Bellakt. 'It is a great achievement.'

Bellakt holds a near-monopoly on the supply of dairy products in Belarus, and provides Belarusians with more than 90 per cent of their milk, including the high-fat powdered milk and baby formula now absent from store shelves.

'It's not tasty and it's not healthy for my baby,' huffed Inna Mitskevich, a Minsk housewife, when asked why she didn't purchase a low-fat alternative. 'You can hardly call it milk, and certainly you can't drink the stuff.'

Like many other Belarusians Mitskevich blamed, perhaps unfairly, blossoming trade between Belarus and Venezuela as the root cause of the baby formula shortage. The largest foreign purchaser of Belarusian dairy products is however Russia.

It's not a problem of Belarusian capacity. Belarus already makes, annually, 600 litres of milk per Belarusian man, woman, and child.

The Lukashenko government, eyeing potential export earnings, has designated dairy manufacturing a national priority. Belarus intends by 2010 to double its 6.3-million-tonne annual milk production, said Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky in a nationally-televised speech.

Political scientist Yaroslav Romanchiuk cited Belarus' need for hard currency as the driving force behind what many Belarusian consumers are calling 'Lukashenko's milk-for-oil deal.'

'Our country is surrounded by richer markets, and our dairy products are state-subsidised,' he said. 'So when our government needs foreign currency or goods, it is natural it sells cheap milk abroad, rather than to its own citizens.'

Traders looking to the short term predicted a spike in dairy product prices across the country.

'This pressure on milk supplies is going to raise the official wholesale price, there is no other way,' said cheesemaker Aleksander Volkov. 'And of course I will pass that on to the consumer.'

Wholesale milk prices in Belarus are fixed by the government. Although the country's collectively-run dairy farms technically are self-supporting businesses, they have only one legal customer: Bellakt.

A long-term milk shortage would be bad news for Lukashenko, Romanchiuk predicted, as affordable meat and dairy products are a key feature of a Soviet-style social contract the Belarusian government has used since 1996 to maintain public support.

Mrs Mitskevich was more practical, saying she would still get milk formula from friends in Russia, or via a contact inside a collective farm willing to sell powdered milk on the sly.

'My baby has to have milk,' she said.