What does financial sector of Belarus have to say to put the economy back on track? |
Belarus has lost 0.9% of its GDP in 2020. When COVID slows down, fast economic recovery, within two years, seems to be an optimistic scenario for Belarus. We highlight three key challenges for Belarusian economy to make fast recovery happen:
Enabling fast growth of small and medium-size businesses (SMEs)
by ensuring stable sources of money for recovery
Expansion of the financial sector in its size to GDP
by launching new accumulative financial products and new intermediaries
Optimisation of the social security system
by better targeting of social payments
Economic recession in Belarus and the world economy will bring difficulties with the debt payments by firms and population, and on the other hand, significant financial resources will be required for recovery. The key challenge for the Belarusian financial system is to not to reduce lending flow despite of the losses during COVID-19.
To ensure the stability of banks and the financial system in general, the National Bank of Belarus (NBB) will still face the old problems:
- growing share of bad debts in banks’ assets
- relatively low level of the liquid foreign currency reserves by NBB
- potential growth of economy dollarisation
The key financial burden in the recovery of the Belarusian economy will fall on the banking sector. Non-depository financial institutions, primarily the Development Bank and leasing companies, will also become important intermediaries for investments, including for small and medium-sized businesses and other
To read more about the role of financial sector in recovering of Belarus economy in a short (2.5 pages, 5 minutes reading) paper prepared by CASE Belarus please click:
