Fact-check: Belarus achievements advertised on state TV after president's speech
They did it! Did they really?
The broadcast of Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s speech on Belarus state TV was followed by the video “We Did It Together”. The authors analyzed international rankings and gathered all Belarus’ achievements there. Guess what? If you believe the Belarusian television, our country is not that bad in comparison with others! We live in one of the best countries and almost all the other states envy us!
But it only seemed true until Euroradio decided to do the fact checking of our outstanding achievements.
Top 10 in safety index
Sounds great! But let us look into it. The safety index was made by the service Numbeo. It is based on the survey filled in by users. Belarus is the 15th position (out of 115). It used to be number 10 a year ago. Minsk is in the 36th position.
The President referred to ‘the safety index’ in his speech. He also mistakenly mentioned the 10th place. It is time the MFA changed the information on its website too.
Top 3 in access to medical care
The rankings based on the efficiency of healthcare systems were made by the agency Bloomberg on the basis of information presented by the UN, World Bank and the World Health Organization. However, Belarus is in the 48th position (out of 56). Why did they mention ‘top 3’?
The cost of medical care compared with the dollar income per capita is one of the criteria. This is what ‘access to medical care’ means. However, Belarus is in the 9th position here (it used to be top-3 in 2014). Furthermore, Belarus is in the 72nd position in the WHO rankings. This is our real rating.
Belarus secures its own food
"The demand for some products (meat, butter, cheese, eggs and flower) is fully satisfied by Belarusian producers,” the Belsat website says. Our country’s food export totalled $3.6 billion. The import totalled $3.1 billion. Thus, the surplus was $462 million.
54.7% of cereals, 28% of vegetables, 80.3% of oil and 91.2% of fruits consumed by Belarusians are imported. Furthermore, it is impossible to grow bananas or rice in Belarus.
Top 37 in Doing Business
Belarus has gone down by one position (to 38) in the World Bank’s rankings Doing Business. It is also number… 96 in taxation.
Belarus is leading in the global rankings of information technology development on post-Soviet territory
The wording ‘post-Soviet territory’ is alerting. Belarus is No.34 in the world rankings. It is in the first place on the post-Soviet territory but only if you do not count Estonia (No. 17). The authors of the film must have problems with history, geography or calculations.
The volume of foreign investments totalled $8.5 billion in 2016
It totalled $9.7 billion – in 2017. They are using outdated information – the situation has improved! However, 7% of the investments are from Cyprus and 26% - from the UK. Who are those Cypriots and Britons investing in Belarus? Aren’t they former Belarusian citizens who chose quieter harbours for their business?
Also, the volume of foreign investments has decreased by a third since 2014.
14 babies are born every hour in Belarus
102 556 children were born in Belarus in 2017 – 11.7 babies per hour. 14 babies per hour were born in 2015. The birth rate has been decreasing for two years.
