In his address at the third All-Belarus People’s Assembly on March 2, 2006, the President of the Republic of Belarus  expounded on Belarus’ development prospects for the next five-year planning period and outlined the priority objectives whose implementation would furnish a powerful impetus to socio-economic development of our republic and would considerably raise living standards of the people.

Alexander Lukashenko underscored that Belarus had worked out its own model of development based on well-balanced and thought-out reforms. This model shuns sweeping privatization and shock therapy and preserves everything what was best in our economy and in our traditions.

“The country’s development policy line worked out by us has proved right. High rates of economic growth which our economy has been demonstrating for more than 10 years already provide a good evidence thereof,” Alexander Lukashenko said. The annual GDP growth over the past five-year planning period was 7.5 percent in Belarus as against 3.5 percent of the world average.

The President pointed out that Belarus had fulfilled the major indicators of the Programme of socio-economic development of Belarus for 2001-2005. 

The priority goal of the current five-year planning period is a sharp rise in living standards. We should be striving to achieve, in five years, a quality of life of our citizens comparable to the West-European standards, the President said.

Acceleration of innovations is going to be the main distinctive feature of the development of the production sector in the current five-year period. For one thing, Br 310 billion have been envisaged for the support of science during this year alone, nearly one-third more that it was targeted last year. By 2010, allocations to science will grow at least two-fold.