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The reduced production output of the industry was caused, first of all,
by a significant decrease of supplies of raw materials and energy resources,
components and semi-finished items and, at a later stage, by the growing
problems of sale of finished products due to the loss of solvent consumers on
the domestic market, on Russian markets and markets of other CIS countries.
Over the recent years, the machine building has seen reducing the share
of the vehicle, tractor and agricultural machinery sectors as well as of the
machine-tool and tool industry. The drop of product competitiveness as regards
price parameters has entailed a significant reduction of the share of output of
technically progressive but expensive types of products; a sharp decrease of
digitally-controlled machine-tools, industrial robots, processing centers and
flexible production modules and systems.
The problem of conversion remains acute for the Republic. The defense
industry of Belarus, deeply integrated into the economy of the FSU,
traditionally developed in close integration with the all-USSR firms. The
mass-scale conversion (output of military products decreased 4.5-5 times only
in 1992-1993) was detrimental to the entire machine building complex.
Despite the remaining problems, the machine building products takes the
leading position in the total volume of export of the Republic. The available
scientific and technical as well as production potential of this industry
allows a significant growth of products in demand on the domestic and foreign
markets.
A complex of measures has been developed by the government aimed at
developing integration, integration of the leading Belarusian machine building
facilities into international corporate structures. More and more attention is
paid to commercialization and restructuring of machine building enterprises
(including involvement of foreign investors) with a view of assuring their
competitiveness on foreign markets.