Aleksandr Lukashenko announced on February 25 that he would be on the rise in the presidential elections, which are due to take place next year.
Two days later, Alexey Avdonin, an expert at the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, spoke about the economic achievements of the air of state-run TV channel Belarus 1:
“It should be recognized that thanks to the political will of the leadership of our country, we are entering election cycles with good socio-economic indicators. Thus, for January of this year, the country's economy grew by almost 3%. <…> The return on sales in 2023 was at 7%, and the return on sales of products, goods, works and services was 8.5%. As you can see, the skimping is not our nightmare. Our stable economic growth is due to the good growth dynamics of key indicators,” he said.
In fact, In January 2024, Belarus' GDP increased by 2.8% compared to January last year. But in December, annual growth was 3.9%. Thus, the Belarus economic growth rate has slowed down.
The return on sales in 2023 was indeed 7%, but in 2022 it was higher — 8.5%. The profitability of products sold for the year also decreased from 10.5% to 8.5%.
In addition, the profitability of Belarusian enterprises decreased by almost 8%.