Context: The Finance Minister, Uladzislau Tatarynovich, said that the deficit in Belarus’s national budget was reduced by almost half last year. Initially, the authorities expected the difference between revenues and expenditure to be around 4 billion Belarusian rubles, but tax inflows were actually coming in greater amounts. At the same time, although the national budgets were initially adopted with a deficit, in certain years, they were sometimes executed with a surplus when revenues exceeded expenditures. The exception was 2022.
News about the state of the Belarusian budget was presented positively on theTV channel. On the 12 March 2026 broadcast, the Nashi novosti anchor said:
“Growth of production and national budget revenues: over the past five years, the country’s GDP has grown by 7.3%. This made it possible to maintain a positive trend in budget revenues.”
GDP did increase over the five-year period. The authorities, however, had expected economic growth of around 20%, but the actual figure turned out to be approximately three times lower than expected. In this context, it would be wrong to talk about definitive success.
The same situation was observed in the previous five-year period, from 2016 to 2020. At that time, the authorities had planned for growth of at least 12%, but the rate turned out to be around three times lower.
The difference between expectations and reality was even greater between 2011 and 2015. At the time, the planned growth rate was 62%, but the economy grew by only about 6% over the five years.
In other words, for around 15 years, the government’s economic forecasts have consistently diverged from the actual results. The Belarusian economy grew at an average annual rate of around 1% during this period.
The last time the economy developed in line with government plans was as far back as before 2010. In contrast, Lithuania’s and Poland’s GDPs have grown by over 60% in the last 15 years, whereas the EU economy as a whole has grown by just over 20%.
