br23 blog - minsk, belarus

“Banker” published an article about Lithuania in its latest issue:

• Ten years old and looking good (online version doesn’t have table and graphs, unfortunately)

“Lithuania’s banking sector has come from nowhere a decade ago to become a highly competitive business.”

“Hansabankas was the first to introduce chip-cards in the country, and our ATM terminals are now chip compatible too. Also, we’ll be introducing WAP banking this year,” Mr Dusevicius says.

WAP banking is expected to prove popular, as Lithuania leads the world in mobile phone ownership, with 138% penetration. “Also, 80% of the bank’s payments are now e-payments, up from 20% in 2002.”

“…Meanwhile, Lithuania’s bankers have been involved in foreign expansion of their own. SEB chose its Lithuanian counterparts to lead its expansion into Ukraine when JSB Agio Bank was purchased in 2005. “We understand the mentality on both sides,” Mr Ziugzda says, adding that many Lithuanian businessmen are heading into Ukraine as the business environment improves there.”

“NORD/LB’s Dr Bubnys notes Lithuanian businesses interest is looking eastwards, and says that it makes practical sense to look at Belarus, as it is only 40km away from Vilnius, but “the political risk is still too high, and no deals are being backed.”” (Br23: I wonder why do Lithuanians use the word “eastward”? Minsk is on the same latitude with Vilnia, just a little bit South.))

In any case, it looks like Lithuania is doing a great job in this area. We could’ve been there too. We were living together with Lithuanians in a single state for 500 years, we often brought to pagan Lithuanians the literacy and culture that they were lacking. Belarusians and Lithuanians were peacefully co-existing for half a millenium, but now we went separate ways. Lithuania is an integral part of the united Europe. And Belarus is a Lukashenka’s controlled territory which he uses as a bargaining chip with Russia.

As for banking sector, in 1990 Lithuania and Belarus had exactly the same starting conditions. Today, Lithuania is enjoying a modern, highly developed banking sector. And Belarus is under a risk of being annexed by Russia, and is being run like a Soviet collective farm. Banking sector is no exception.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 28th, 2006 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.