Export Transformation in Belarus: Results and Opportunities

Belarus is one of Russia’s main trade partners and a member-state of the Eurasian Economic Union. In this paper we evaluate this economy’s progress in diversifying its exports and increasing the level of economic complexity during 1993–2018. We observe that the level of economic complexity was advancing in Belarus within a few years which followed the recession of the 1990s, but then the growth alternated for stagnation. We also use complexity metrics which is designed to assign a higher value to an economy in case it exports more to richer places, to show that Belarusian complex exports are highly geographically concentrated. Belarus economy sells more of its complex products to a small group of its geographical neighbors, all sharing the status of Soviet republics in the past. Without attracting more foreign direct investment, the future of exports from this country is associated with moderate product diversification and stagnant geographical coverage. If instead Belarus follows a policy alternative, it might gain a viable opportunity to enter new geographic markets. The precondition for this result is receiving more foreign direct investment and new technologies that might help Belarus standardize its products accordingly to access new markets and thus allow the geography of Belarusian exports to broaden.