Page 24 - RusRPTFeb19

“Perhaps one of Lukashenko’s greatest achievements in Belarusian society has been his fight against poverty. In the worst years of the 1990s, half of the population of Belarus was languishing below the poverty line. This figure is now 10 times smaller,” the World Bank said in a report on poverty.
However, Belarusian statistics cannot be taken entirely at face value. The official unemployment rate is 0.5% but the World Bank estimates true unemployment is probably five times higher.
Poverty is a big issue in Russia too. Just under 20mn Russians are on or under the poverty line and president Vladimir Putin promised to halve the number as part of his May Decrees programme to “transform” the country.
However, the poverty rate in Russia was 13.2% in 2018 and together with post-Soviet record low unemployment and inflation Russia is in the top ten. Russia’s low despair index number of 20.6 is even ahead of the EU, which is ranked 11 in comparison to New Europe.
Like Lukashenko, Putin has earned a lot of credit with his people for bringing down the despair index since he took over in 2000. Under former president Boris Yeltsin poverty got up to 60% and hyperinflation topped 2000% at its worst; Russia’s despair index was ten-times higher than those in Central Europe during the nadir in the 90s.
Putin’s administration saw income levels increase the early 2000s and drove down the poverty rate from 29% in 2000 to 10.7% in 2012, its best result. Unfortunately, the income levels didn’t remain and the poverty rate has been growing slowly since to 13.5% in 2016, before starting to fall again last year. Moreover, if Russia’s inflation rises from its last year low of 3.2% to the 6% that is expected for this year, the despite index would be pushed up to 23.6 and Russia’s ranking in the despair index will fall from its current seventh place to 9th. A rising despair index represents real pain for the population, but Russia would still rank on par or better than most Central European countries and ahead of the EU.
Perhaps unsurprisingly Ukraine’s despair index is a whopping 44 at the moment ranking it 26th out a total of 33 countries in our survey. But what is surprising is that even 44 is a pretty low result given the extent of the economic collapse in 2015 when the economy contracted by 15%. In depths of the 1998 crisis many countries had despair indices north of 60.
With poverty of 24.5% in 2017 – almost double Russia’s rate – the number has been falling. Unemployment has been a steady 9.5% in 2018, which is painful, but not a catastrophe. And inflation is a high 10% but that was also falling as a result of resolute action by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) to keep rates high. All said and done Ukraine is deal fairly well with its crisis as far as despair is concerned.
Central Europe
Central Europe is doing a lot less well in terms of despair given the region has been on a three year long boom. The stand out success in the region is Czechia, which has an extremely low despair index number of 15.1, mainly thanks to very low poverty and modest levels of inflation and unemployment, that ranks it in fourth place overall.
Poland is doing much less well due to relatively high poverty of 17.3% coupled with an uncomfortable 5.7% unemployment level to give it a despair score of 24.3. And part of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban enduring popularity with his base is connected to Hungary’s low despair number of 21.2 – better than the EU – thanks to its low poverty levels, modest inflation and low unemployment.
The surprise from Central Europe is the Baltic States which all score very
24 RUSSIA Country Report February 2019 www.intellinews.com