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Summary of the Report “Belarus: Poverty Assessment. Can
Poverty Reduction and Access to Services Be Sustained?”
In
December 2004 the World Bank prepared a Report “Belarus: Poverty Assessment.
Can Poverty Reduction and Access to Services Be Sustained?” The assessment
of the perspective for reducing poverty in The Republic of Belarus is
carried out on the basis of analysis of the situation with regard to the
increase of income of the population, the accessibility of education,
healthcare and social protection.
The authors of the Report state that Belarus recovered GDP growth relatively
rapidly after the economic crisis of the beginning of the 1990s, reduced
poverty levels significantly, maintained wide coverage of basic education
and health services, and achieved this without gross exacerbation of
inequality. The policy framework in place has been successful in maintaining
living standards and reducing poverty better than in several transition
economies.
The Report reflects that the performance-enhancing reforms in education,
health and social protection, which Belarus has embarked on, are in the
right direction. The aim of these reforms is to enhance the effectiveness
and quality of these services.
According to the conclusions drawn by the authors of the Report the poverty
reduction and inequality performance of Belarus is impressive. Belarus has
embarked on a number of reforms to support these objectives, especially in
the last 2-3 years and especially in terms of institutional reforms to its
education, health and social protection service delivery and financing
systems. It is noted that the social protection system is almost universal,
covering about 4 in 5 persons. Pensions are found to be the most adequate
benefit, in part because of a strong policy of indexing pensions to real
wages. Child allowances are also found to provide adequate protection. Real
wages more than doubled in the last 7 years.
According to the Report, Belarus can be justly proud of the elaborate system
of social services it provides its population. The ability of households to
access quality education, health and social protection services makes a
large difference to their living standards in the present, and their
prospects for the future.
The Report provides comparison of several characteristics of social
development of Belarus with those of the European Union states, countries of
Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS. The Report demonstrates that our
country spends more on education and healthcare than the CIS countries and,
on average, more than the members of The Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development. The experts of The World Bank conclude that
Belarus’ poverty monitoring and analysis system has potential to be a “good
practice” for the region.
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