Belarus and the World Bank

The World Bank Group was a large international financial institution that provided loans and grants in order to fund capital projects in poor and developing nations across the globe. Its main goal is to reduce poverty worldwide. It consists of five other large international financial banks, each providing funding for different types of projects. Belarus joined the World Bank back in 1992 and has since then received over $2.5 billion in lending commitments since then and in the form of grant financing, it has received $31 million, with much of this funding going towards programs that include civil society partners.^[1] Currently, Belarus's active portfolio within the World Bank has a total of $933 million, with it containing a total of nine different projects, as well as two more projects that are currently still in preparation in the areas of energy efficiency and higher education.^[2] The majority of this funding has been directed towards the themes of pollution management and environmental health, climate change, and rural services and infrastructures, with the majority of the funding going directly into the central government, other agencies and extractives, and forestry sectors of the country, as well as sustainable energy.^[3] In looking to have more economic growth, improving the private sector environment within Belarus could help.^[4]

Belarus has seen much economic struggle in the past and has struggled to recover from past economic collapses, especially with the collapse of the USSR socialist system making it one of the poorest countries in Europe at the time with around 50% of the population living below the poverty line. In the year 2000, people living within poverty was at a high of 60%, but was drastically cut to below 1% by 2013 as Belarus experienced much of its financial growth between the years of 2006-2011 as expenditures amongst the bottom 40% of the population actually increased during the 2008 financial crisis.^[5] Unemployment still remains a major issue today as less than 10% of those unemployed do not even receive welfare benefits.^[6] However, even with much of its economic advances, Belarus has since then remained on the decline due to weakness in exports and final consumption, as well as large public debt.^[7]

Despite its efforts for economic growth, Belarus has long struggled with a relatively low Gross Domestic Product per capita and continues to even today due to low productivity growth and worsening external environment.^[8] Belarus's last record of gross domestic product per capita has it at 6744.50 US dollars back in 2018 and a GNI per capita of 5,670.^[9]

As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on March 2, 2022, the World Bank Group declared that it has stopped all its programs in Russia and Belarus. In addition, it stated that there has been no new lending approved to Belarus since mid-2020.^[10]