Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenka has ordered the country's microelectronics industry to stay "half a step ahead" and produce products in demand on the global market, TASS reported on January 30.

OJSC Planar is a state enterprise that specialises in the development and supply of components in the field of microelectronics, which are used for the production of military hardware such as UAVs.

It is part of a state-administered enterprise cluster, supervised by the Strategic Projects Council and directly by the President of Belarus. Planar also contributes to the Belarusian-Russian technological and military cooperation. OJSC Planar, therefore, is part of the Belarusian military-industrial complex.

Lukashenko visited Planar on January 30, a microelectronics company and a leader in the sector. 

“If you don’t fall behind, you’ll always have work and good money. Not just from us,” Aleksandr Lukashenka told Planar Director General Sergei Avakov. “You have outpaced everything and everyone. Both in Belarus and in Russia. You’ve gotten ahead of them all.”

According to the president, Belarus has preserved the production facilities that remained after the Soviet Union.

Moreover, thanks to state support, enterprises surviving from the Soviet era were successfully modernised and made cutting-edge. 

“There was simply no money back then, and everyone needed [help]. I understood that if we had had the funds, we would have surged forward. What drove me then? Most likely, intuition. Help was provided to Integral,” said the head of state. “And now our time has come. We invested that money for a reason. What people dreamed of in the Soviet period (those who laid this foundation), those dreams have begun to come true.”

You are ahead of everything and everyone. In Belarus and in Russia. You are ahead of everyone," Lukashenka told the company's director general Sergei Avakov.

Belarus is the only post-Soviet country that has preserved this production on such a scale, Lukashenko said, according to BelTA. "We have preserved everything that remained to us from the Soviet legacy.

The dream of those who laid the foundations for this production has come true. We have turned out to be in demand," the president said.