"Lukashenko's Decisions Look Idiotic."

The dictator should blame himself for all failures.

Why didn't any initiative of the Belarusian authorities to develop the regions work? On the channel BRC, analyst Sergei Chaly ponders about it:

- In 2019, there was a project called "11 reference points," when they identified 11 cities with a population of 80 thousand people or more, which they decided to develop," Chaly recalled. - Baranovichi and Pinsk from Brest region, Polotsk, Novopolotsk and Orsha from Vitebsk region, Mozyr from Gomel region, Lida from Grodno region, Borisov, Soligorsk, Molodechno from Minsk region, and Bobruisk from Mogilev region - these are the cities.

The logic was that if we cannot create equal living conditions everywhere, these cities will become points of attraction for smaller districts, such as, for example, Liozna, Gantsevichy and others.

That is, we wanted a person from a small town to go not to Minsk and regional centers, but, let's say, to Baranavichy or another city out of these eleven.

But what we got as a result: we renewed social infrastructure - sports complexes, schools, hospitals - because it is much easier to deal with it, especially for budget funds.

Another thing is to start production. You have to understand it, you can't build it just like that. It turned out that the social sector seemed to have been pulled out, but they could not attract investments to increase exports.

By 2023 it became clear that focusing only on 11 large cities exacerbated the problem even more, and small districts, including more than a hundred lagging behind, were forgotten altogether.

In the end, the concept of "11 cities" evolved into the initiative "One District - One Project". And it should be understood that initially it was not a development program, it was a rescue program.

It was like a resuscitation measure, I even saw such a phrase in the documents somewhere - "social defibrillator". At the same time, some people said about this project, saying that it was our answer to the Chinese miracle on minimum wages.

Analyst explained why none of the initiatives of Belarusian officials worked and pointed out the main mistake.

- Back in 2022, then Prime Minister Golovchenko said the following phrase about these projects: "We are making an industrialization map. We will plant these projects in the regions. I don't see any other way."

In this connection Lukashenko warned the governors that the decision was political and should be strictly implemented. As a result, they got what they wanted.

I believe that they got the name "One District - One Project" from Japan, where there was also a project-movement "One Village - One Product" or, to translate it more precisely, "One Brand".

The idea was to take some regional goods or services, something quite simple, such as shiitake mushrooms, ceramics, mineral water, and make it a global brand. In other words, global marketing at once. Their principle was called "local but global".

This program was so successful that it was copied several times. Among other things, China copied and developed it really creatively.

The idea of regional development was their idea: we build a global huge production for the whole world at once, because we have a lot of workers. That, in fact, eventually became the world Chinese economic miracle.

Hence our officials have the phrase "our answer to the Chinese miracle on minimum wages". In China, this program has been actively developing since 2007 for 15 years.

If the Japanese idea initially involved more marketing, there was a huge industrial capital investment. I think they decided to borrow it from us, but on our scale - a lower pipe, lower smoke.

That is, they built a huge global production facility there, while in some subsidized area in our country, for example, a workshop for the production of wooden pallets or a birch sap bottling line for 15 people.

In both China and us it was artificial, i.e. the development was not natural, only, unlike China, we have neither personnel nor free capital.

There is a similar project for the development of small towns in Poland. And it worked there too, unlike us.

The key difference, from my point of view, is not that Poland received 200 billion euros from the European Union. In fact, we received enough from Russia. Instead of supporting unprofitable collective farms, we could have made these small towns attractive for investors.

I would like to emphasize that Poland passed a reform on decentralization of state administration back in 1999, which significantly increased the autonomy of the regions.

The leadership of communes and voivodships is elected there, there are municipalities and huge autonomy, including taxation, because such projects cannot live without it.

That is, personal income tax and profit tax remain locally, and people there decide for themselves what to use them for.

As a result, in Poland the head who is elected by the district has a direct interest in the development of business there. In our country we have a temporary person in such positions, who was appointed there today and tomorrow will be transferred somewhere else, and he is responsible only to one person.

Another important point is transportation connection, when you can live 40 minutes away from your place of work, being practically in another city. For example, from Lodz you can get to Warsaw in 40 minutes by expressway or railroad.

And here is the main conclusion, which cannot be reached in Belarus: you cannot call an initiative what you impose from above. At the same time, you impose it on someone who basically doesn't care about what's happening to this district, because he is not responsible to the people.

But in the end, all this is the result of Lukashenko's efforts. He has no one to blame for the fact that nothing is working.

It's entirely his idea to pass his own governing decisions, which are getting more and more idiotic, from top to bottom. And the whole system is set up so that the only thing left is the hulk that works for perception and answers to him upstairs. And everything else alive is gradually dying out.

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