Consequences of Russian Financial Crisis for Belarus

Description:

This was a research project carried out by CASE in cooperation with the IPM, financed by Freedom House (grant # 98-159-38). Stanislav Bogdankevich, Pavel Daneyko, Vladimir Usovskii, Rafal Antczak and Krzysztof Polomski took part in its realization.

An analysis of Belarus's macroeconomic situation has shown that the effects of the Russian Crisis of August 1998 had caused a deepening of the ongoing economic crisis in Belarus, which had already begun in March 1998. A worsening of the economic situation went hand-in-hand with a physical shortage of consumer goods. The Belarusian economy's over-dependence on Russia and attempts to create an autarkic economic model out of step with the rest of the world made Belarus entirely vulnerable to a failure of Russia's economic reforms. Results of the work were presented at a conference in October 1999 in Warsaw.