Policy Papers
Which Growth Rate does Belarus need? Focus on CEE Leaders
This paper deals with the prospects of Belarus’ economic growth in regional context. Such focus of analysis emphasizes relative level of well-being as the benchmark for assessing economic performance of the country. In this study, I use Czech Republic and Slovakia as benchmarks for Belarus, as they are rather similar to Belarus according to a range of fundamental characteristics, and at the same time, they are among leaders on well-being level in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The study shows that in recent years growth in Belarus has lost synchrony with CEE countries. This have changed a long-term trend in relative well-being level of Belarus: lagging has replaced catching-up CEE leaders. Moreover, if poor growth in Belarus persists, low relative level of well-being either will be frozen or even it will reduce further. For avoiding such scenario Belarus needs to strengthen it growth potential. I provide assessments for relationships between growth rate in Belarus and time required for closing the well-being gap vs. CEE leaders. Among these options, I select a kind of compromise between economic ambitions of Belarus and reality. This approach produces tentative targets for output growth in Belarus: 6% in medium-term perspective (around 10 years) and 5% in longer-term (around 20 years) perspective.
The policy paper is available only in Russian.