Dzmitry Halubnichy, Advisor, Belarusian Institute of Strategic Studies
Recently, the European Commission has released the Digital Economy and Society Index, a composite index that summarizes relevant indicators on Europe’s digital performance and tracks the evolution of the EU Member States in digital competitiveness.
The Index assesses key dimensions of the European information society: Telecom sector, Broadband, Mobile, Internet usage, Internet services, eGovernment, eCommerce, eBusiness, ICT Skills, Research and Development.
StrategEast has interviewed leading experts from EaP countries on the perspectives of IT development in their countries. Here are the answers from the expert on Belarus.
Against the background of a difficult situation with energy resources, Belarus is strategically trying to focus its country potential on the high-tech industry.
The consistent efforts of Belarus are bringing certain results, which is reflected in the system of international indices. According to the index of information and communication technologies (ICT) development estimated by International Telecommunication Union the Republic of Belarus was placed 32nd out of 175 countries and occupies a leading position in this indicator in the CIS region: according to the ICT development index, the Republic of Belarus ahead of the Russian Federation (43rd place), Kazakhstan (52nd place), Azerbaijan (65th place), Moldova (59th place), Ukraine (79th place). In 2018, the Republic of Belarus also climbed to 38th place in the United Nations E-Government Survey, moving 11 lines up compared to the results of 2016. For the first time Belarus moved to the group of countries (top 40) with a high index of e-government development. According to the index of electronic participation (E-Participation), which reflects the development of services for active communication between citizens and the state, Belarus rose to 33rd place. The improvement in comparison with 2016 was “plus” 43 positions.
The most promising high-tech project of Belarus is the High-Tech Park (HTP), established in 2005, which has become the leading high-tech cluster in Eastern Europe and the CIS. On December 21, 2017, A.Lukashenko also signed decree “On the development of the digital economy”, which created special conditions for the development of the IT industry. At the end of 2019, the production volume of HTP amounted to over 2 billion US dollars that demonstrated 162% – growth. Currently, the Park employs about 61 thousand people. This is 1.4% of those employed in the economy of Belarus, and they produce 3.5% of the GDP. The export of HTP is more than 20% of the total export of services in Belarus.
Thus, it is possible to say that Belarus is taking a leading position in Eastern Europe in this area and is ready to compete in the region in the field of high technologies due to the created state conditions for the development of the IT industry and human capital.
Furthermore, having a national Conception of informational security, by which Belarus declares the principles of informational neutrality and informational sovereignty, Belarus is also aimed at the development of international digital initiatives, as evidenced by the initiative of the «Belt of Digital Good-neighborliness» that aimed at developing of secure international space free of different kinds of informational interferences.
