Economist About Belarusian Agricultural Sector: Looking For Point Of Increase In It Is An Occupation For People With Very Developed Imagination

With few exceptions, no country is developing relying on agriculture.

Senior researcher of the Belarusian Economic Research and Education Center (Beroc) Leu L'vouski has commented on Lukashenka's statements about agriculture on Facebook:

- Yesterday, Aliaksandr Lukashenka spent the whole day dealing with agriculture issues: everything is strategic about it, "sowing winter crops is issue number one," "an alarm has been sounded," "reports from governors on livestock deaths," and so on.

Just for the sake of context: 8.7% of Belarusians involved in the economy are engaged in agriculture, and this figure is steadily decreasing. They create 6.7% of GDP.

The average growth rate of this type of economic activity since 2011 has been 1.9%, which is certainly higher than our total growth rate of 1.2%, but significantly lower than that of the IT sector with its 10.3% a year.

However, it is not that we do not have any prospects in this field. The share of global GDP falling on agriculture is decreasing, <...> it's just that other sectors of the economy are growing much faster. Our agriculture is not unprofitable, which is not bad, but looking for a potential point of increase in it is an occupation for people with a very developed imagination.

With few exceptions, no country develops by relying on agriculture. And the countries with a large share of GDP in agriculture are among the poorest.

Thus, contrary to popular belief, Belarus is not an agricultural country. And thank goodness for that.