It's a Bolshevik forced economy. Belarus's network of price controls has fostered a black market in food, to farmers' ruination . The country's artificially-low prices force farmers to sell their crops at a loss, while entrepreneurs snap up the food and smuggle it to Ukraine or Russia, where it is resold for a healthy profit . It is now illegal to export food without a permit. Directly across the aisle, private vendors were selling thick, lean steaks for 450,000 rubles.
Private stalls raise their own produce and meat or buy it from private wholesalers.
There are just too many of them. The fish rots from the head. Industry is in no better shape. Westerners buy little, in part because Belarus factories are so hobbled by economic controls that they spend little money to modernize and are no longer competitive. Nor has Belarus tried much to sell to the West .