“Prosperity” — meaning comfort and sufficiency without excess — was the version of a national idea for Belarus proposed on ONT by Lyubov Duktova, a senior researcher at the Yanka Kupala Institute of Literary Studies. In her view, the importance of this idea for Belarusians is confirmed by macroeconomic indicators such as the Gini index and GDP based on purchasing power parity, where she claimed Belarus is ahead of other countries.
“GDP based on purchasing power parity: Belarus ranks 66th — that’s fairly high. At times we even surpass some EU countries in this ranking, including nations with strong economies. For example, Luxembourg. So perhaps it’s our Belarusian modesty, right? Which means we still need to teach, starting with the younger generation, how to talk about our country,” Dukhtova explained on the program “Face to Face” on Aug. 5, 2025.
GDP based on purchasing power parity makes it possible to compare countries’ economies while accounting for price differences. In fact, the ONT guest understated it: according to World Bank data, in 2024 Belarus ranked 65th worldwide with about 300 billion international dollars. That put the country one spot higher than Lyubov Duktova claimed. And ahead of several small EU countries, including Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus and Estonia.
But comparing Belarus with Luxembourg is misleading. Belarus has 13.5 times more people, which naturally makes its economy larger. If you look at the same indicator per capita, Luxembourg ranks fifth in the world, while Belarus comes in at 71st. That’s still above the global average, but below every EU country. By GDP per capita in purchasing power parity, Latvia is a third ahead of Belarus, Poland is one and a half times higher, and Lithuania exceeds it by more than 60%.