TRENDS
SUCH OPTIMISTIC REALITY, or Life reflected by statistics Today it is very important to understand how our society and economy look in terms of quantity. In general, one cannot do without such information when it comes time to draw up short- and long-term plans for the country’s development. On the whole, a constant increase in the amount of information has become the trend of our time: specialists have an increasing demand for figures, which are the basis for taking the most important decisions in the field of economy, social sector and state building in general, citizens have a need to understand and analyze facts and events. Today international standards are such that it’s not enough to assess, for example, only the gross domestic product and calculate the average salary in the country — the reality requires the collection and analysis of a huge amount of data on the state and society activities.
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So, let’s start with the results of the latest population census, conducted in 2019. There are 9 million 413 thousand of us in total, including 4 million 351 thousand men and 5 million 62 thousand women. As well as for other European countries, the issue of population aging is urgent for Belarus. The 2019 census shows that over the past 10 years, the average age of the country’s residents has increased by 1.2 years and is 40.7 years. Representatives of 156 nationalities live in Belarus today. The most numerous are Belarusians — 84.9 percent (according to the 2009 population census — 83.7 percent), Russians, Poles and Ukrainians. As for good trends, it is definitely worth noting that recently the number of graduates in Belarus has grown significantly. To be more precise, every fourth resident of the country today has a higher education, almost every third has a specialized secondary education. For comparison: in 2009 it was every fifth and fourth, respectively. If we consider the situation through a social cross-section, undoubtedly, the data on the marital status of Belarusians have become stable, which indicates that traditional family relations are preserved in the country. According to the results of the 2019 census, at the age of 15 and over, 62 percent of men and 53 percent of women are in a registered marriage or in unregistered relationships, almost the same numbers as in 2009 (62 percent of men and 52 percent of women). Let us ask ourselves the following question: what is the share of small and medium-sized businesses in the overall structure of the country’s economy in recent years, how intensively is it developing, in particular, in the regions? It turns out that today small businesses form about a quarter of the country’s GDP, and their share increased from 23.4 percent in 2015 to 25.6 in 2019. At the same time, small enterprises and micro-organizations form more than half of the gross added value of small and mediumsized enterprises in the country. As for the regions, there has been a stable trend of growth in the share of small businesses in the gross regional product in
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БЕЛАРУСЬ. BELARUS 2021
Minsk, Brest, Mogilev regions and the city of Minsk over the past five years. At the end of 2019, above the national average (25.6 percent) contribution of small and medium-sized businesses to the formation of the regional economy was traditionally noted in Minsk and the Minsk region: 44 and 32.3 percent, respectively. At the same time, the most intensive growth was in the capital — additional 4.4 percent (in 2015–39.6). Statistical indicators show that the past year was quite difficult for foreign economic activity, i. e. the problems were related to instability in the financial market, coronavirus, and so on. For these reasons, the decline in exports was inevitable, but it should be noted that the decline was at a slower pace than imports. Following the results of 11 months of the last year, the country reached a positive balance of $2 billion, which is a very good result for us. In physical terms, during this period, exports decreased by only 1.7 percent. Even in such hard times, our enterprises mostly worked not for a warehouse, but for export, which at the end of the year resulted in a decrease in finished product stock. The latest statistics show that we are currently cooperating with more than 200 countries on export-import supplies. The geography of Belarusian exports is constantly expanding. Over the
