Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of Belarus Roman Golovchenko spoke about the plans for finalizing the draft 2026-2030 Social and Economic Development Program, BelTA has learned.
Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has signed an order to set up a working group to finalize the draft 2026-2030 Social and Economic Development Program. The group includes delegates of the Belarusian People’s Congress, current and former heads of government agencies, organizations in the real economy, the academic community and public associations. Chairman of the Board of the National Bank Roman Golovchenko was appointed head of the group. Belarus’ National Bank hosted the first meeting of the working group on 6 October.
This is the first time that the country’s social and economic development program shall be subjected for approval by the Belarusian People’s Congress in accordance with the amendments to the Constitution. According to Roman Golovchenko, the proposals for finalizing the program primarily concern the use of a systematic approach to choosing the country’s social and economic development priorities and ensuring their alignment with current challenges and development prospects. “Some indicators are not ambitious enough. There is a lack of new innovative projects for the country’s development, etc. The main goal of this working group is to promptly finalize the draft program taking into account the opinions of the delegates of the Belarusian People’s Congress. I would like to emphasize that our task is not to write some new document, as the head of state has generally approved the concept of the draft. Much work has been done, and we support the basic framework of the document. But we need to take a comprehensive look at the priorities, areas and tasks, or examine them from different angles. We have one goal: to create a single document for the country’s future development. And this document should be as easy to understand as possible, so that every citizen is clear about the goals the country plans to achieve in the next five years,” he said.
The head of the National Bank emphasized that work on the draft program must be carried out in full compliance with the law on state forecasting, which also outlines the hierarchy for the program.
“In our opinion, the priorities of the five-year plan should be specific yet broad, aimed at achieving the goals of the five-year plan, and contribute to eliminating remaining systemic imbalances and vulnerabilities. Currently, we see that some priorities appear rather specific, more like tools for achieving broader objectives. For example, rental housing, road repair and construction, and so on. Furthermore, these priorities must be aligned with the priorities of the national sustainable development strategy through 2040. Let me remind you, there are five of them: family values and personal growth, quality education, technological independence and building an intellectual economy, a competitive and accessible business environment, and environmental safety and resource efficiency. Hence the task of the working group is to clarify the priorities of the five-year plan,” Roman Golovchenko emphasized.
Even before the first meeting, the working group had formulated proposed priorities. There are six of them. “First: preserving the population, strengthening the nation’s health, and supporting the family. Second: developing human potential, ensuring quality education, and raising a harmonious and patriotic individual. Third: creating a high-quality and comfortable living environment. Fourth: increasing the competitiveness of the national economy and accelerating technological development. Fifth: digital transformation of the economy and public administration, and development of the data economy. Sixth: developing the unique potential of each region. I emphasize that this is our preliminary proposal. Perhaps, you will suggest some changes or additions,” he noted.
Once the priorities are defined, the tasks for each of them will be formulated more clearly. “This is precisely the second aspect. Preliminarily, we see that a certain number of the program’s tasks are rather declarative in nature. A number of sectoral tasks are formulated as a process, not a result. That is, the focus is shifted to procedural steps, not to final achievements. Therefore, it will be very difficult to assess their completion. Words like ‘acceleration,’ ‘increase,’ etc., are used. In our opinion, we should define several tasks within the key areas that are specific and will make a substantial contribution. Our working group needs to define high-level tasks for each priority. Special attention is also required for performance indicators and their alignment with the tasks,” Roman Golovchenko said.
He pointed out that there are questions about how well the indicators align with the declared goals. “For example, regarding the digital economy, the indicator there is the transfer of 97 administrative procedures into digital format. In our opinion, this cannot be the main indicator of the growth of the economy’s digitalization. This speaks more about the relations between society and the state and creating a convenient living environment than about the development of the digital economy itself. Therefore, another task of the working group is to determine what indicators we should set to achieve the priorities and tasks,” the head of Belarus’ National Bank stated.
“Another gap that catches the eye is the high-level macroeconomic indicators and their connection to long-term documents. In fact, the program either lacks them or has very few. On the one hand, without such indicators, it is impossible to assess real progress, including compared to other countries, in achieving the program’s key goal – the transition to new standards of living. On the other hand, the indicators should reflect the goal of increasing the country’s competitiveness, knowledge intensity, productivity, etc. This is important, something you cannot do without. Therefore, we need decide which macroeconomic indicators should be included in the program and, most importantly, set a sufficiently ambitious level for them,” Roman Golovchenko said.
“The work carried out by the government and the Ministry of Economy on the draft social and economic development program overall deserves high praise. But there are gaps that need to be finalized, and the working group can only do this together with the government. Therefore, a significant workload falls on both the Ministry of Economy and the sectoral ministries,” he concluded.