Belarus Headlines

Austrian bank will invest 1.3 billion dollars Austrian's Raiffeisen Bank will invest the equivalent of 1.3 billion dollars in Belarusian business during 2007, a senior government official said on Monday. The one billion Euro sum will go into Belarusian banking, manufacturing, fund investment, and export financing, said Sergei Sidorskiy, Belarusian Prime Minister, according to a Belapan news wire report. Sidorskiy made the announcement after meeting with Patrick-John Butler, a Raiffeisen board member, in the Belarusian capital Minsk. The prediction if accurate would mark the largest foreign investment by a non-Russian company in Belarus, since Belarus became independent in 1991. Raiffesen has operated in Belarus since 2002 through a controlling interest in the Minskheadquartered Priorbank. The operation largely services European corporate customers with business in the former Soviet republic.