Belarus ranks well below the regional average for Economic Competitiveness, with limited signs of growth in key areas. The economy is still dominated by the state, with private sector involvement at below 25% of GDP. A significant proportion of prices are still administered by the state, and the asset share of state owned banks is over 80%. In this context, the paucity of private capital investment is understandable.
The Index governance indicator highlights the fact that many of the country’s material challenges stem from bad governance. The transition from communism has been slow and arduous, with poor government regulation and a lack of effectiveness. Levels of corruption are high and rising, and the rule of law is far from established. Belarus’s openness to trade is limited by a lack of trade freedom and the dependence on commodity exports. Nonetheless, some signs of economic reform are evident, as reflected in the low costs of starting a business.
More encouragingly, Belarus performs much better on the mass education indicators. While the value of years of education and skills acquired under communism can be difficult to assess, public spending on education accounts for over 6% of GDP and the adult literacy rate is almost 100%. The combined gross enrolment rate for primary, secondary and tertiary education is just below 90%, and the retention of students is high, with essentially all students who enrol for primary education finishing secondary school.
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Comparative Liveability is similarly low in Belarus, with political rights and civil liberties being eroded by the regime. The elections in 2006 were neither free nor fair: the authorities attempted to repress the opposition, and several opposition leaders received prison sentences. These factors all tend to correlate, on average, with lower levels of life satisfaction. Government pressure on the judiciary, the media, NGOs and educational institutions is also widespread.
The Index also highlights health as seriously detrimental to Comparative Liveability, with 43%g of citizens dissatisfied with their personal health and a health-adjusted life expectancy of a little over 60 years. This is compounded by the cold climate, which can have a significant negative impact on wellbeing at lower levels of income. Family life similarly provides little satisfaction, as almost 13%g of the population is widowed and another 9%g is divorced.
Environmental degradation is of further concern in Belarus. Particularly worrying are the 55%g of respondents to the Gallup World Poll who registered dissatisfaction with the preservation of the existing environmental resources, and the relatively high levels of discontent with air quality. More positively, unemployment is very low at 1.5% of the workforce, and this is reinforced by the belief, held by 70%g of people, that hard work will allow a person to get ahead. This is an unusually positive score on this indicator for a transition country.
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