No abstract

The topic of welfare sector development in Belarus is nowadays of huge interest since by means of welfare development level it is possible to judge the level and the country’s economic system and the quality of public sector services as well. In recent years, especially in time of recession, the welfare sector positions in Belarus have been considerably weakened. And this is partly explained by the aspiration to keep the old Soviet designs in the welfare system construction. At the same time, when national and subnational budgets are being planned, the governments try to hold with great difficulty the budgetary indicators of welfare sphere at the level of last years. Such attempts, however, lead to the saving of budgetary funds only and they influence the deterioration of the welfare quality. The present paper pursues the aim to show: (i) what tendencies of social budgetary policy can be observed in the time of economic recession (ii), how consistent was the welfare orientation of the central and local budgets in practice and (iii) what prospect ways for welfare sector improvement are there in Belarus. This paper considers the Belarusian welfare branches in national budget and subnational ones, their structure, dynamics and other important indicators. The comparative analysis of welfare sector branches with other European countries is submitted. The paper opens with the inconsistent policy of the Belarusian authorities in the sphere of welfare branches funding. Prospect issues of welfare sphere finance reformation in Belarus in time of an economic crisis are considered.

The paper presented here is the country research and has an analytical character concerning a regional aspect of the public procurement system in Belarus. Stages of the public procurements system’s formation and its legislative base and the development of the electronicization of purchases are considered. The public procurement system at the sub- national level is analyzed and weak points are emphasized. Corruption aspects and ways of their minimization in the public procurement activity are showed. Debatable issues and ways of procurement activity improvement in Belarus regions are presented. The methodology of research is based on the analysis of a series of data on public procurements in the regions of Belarus, including budgetary expenditures on public procurement in the local governments of the Belarus regions and the e-auctions procurement at the Universal Commodity Exchange. Statistical data for analysis was obtained from official sources, such as the State Statistics Committees, Ministry of Finance, Open Joint Stock Company (OJSC) Belarusian Universal Commodity Exchange, and on-line databases of analytical centres working in this field, etc.

The topic of welfare sector development in Belarus nowadays is of huge interest since by means of the welfare development level it is possible to judge the level of the country's economic system and the quality of public sector services as well. In recent years, especially in times of recession, the welfare sector positions in Belarus have been considerably weakened. This is partly explained by the aspiration to keep the old Soviet designs in the welfare system construction. At the same time, when national and subnational budgets are planned, governments try to hold with great difficulty the budgetary indicators of the welfare sphere at the level of last years. Such attempts, however, lead to the saving of budgetary funds only and they influence the deterioration of the welfare quality. The present paper pursues the aim to show: (i) what tendencies of social budgetary policy can be observed in the time of economic recession, (ii) how consistent was the welfare orientation of the central and local budgets in practice, and (iii) prospect ways for the welfare sector financing and what new financial tools and mechanisms are to be introduced. In the paper, methodology is linked with the suggested approach to evaluate the authority's fiscal efforts in welfare branches development using the elasticity coefficient in which exists the correlation between expenditure on welfare sphere branches and total budget revenues. By inserting the authority's financial reports data into the elasticity coefficient there is an opportunity to assess the authority's fiscal efforts in welfare policy. The main methodology background is based on financial reports of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Belarus and on-line databases present in the public finance area. The author considers the Belarusian welfare branches in national and subnational budgets, their structure, dynamics and other important indicators. A comparative analysis of the welfare sector branches with other European countries is submitted. The paper highlights the inconsistent policy of the Belarusian authorities in the sphere of the welfare branches' funding. Also, there are considered debatable issues of the welfare sphere finance reformation in Belarus during the economic crisis.

World experience shows that public participation in the budget process and openness in the public sector are the necessary conditions for a proper economic strategy of the State. Financial openness contributes to the efficient collection and distribution of public resources. It expands the responsibility of governments, strengthens the trust of citizens and prevents opportunities for corruption. Researchers around the world (Alt, Lassen, Skilling, Bernick, Gandía, Yannacopoulos, Darbyshire, Slukhai and others) and international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, OECD, the World Bank, the International Budget Partnership (IBP), the Global Initiative for Financial Transparency and the Open Government Partnership have shown growing interest in financial openness issues in recent years. This paper attempts to develop and test a methodology for the operational analysis of online information openness and transparency of the budget process at the local level. The developed methodology used two criteria: (1) the level of transparency of the local budget and (2) an assessment of authority's efforts in ensuring transparency of local budgets. It is based on expert assessments of the informational significance of particular elements of websites of local authorities in issues of local finance and budget. We interpret the resulting assessment of the information content of the site with the local budget and finances data as the online openness and transparency of local budgets Online Local Budget Index of Transparency (OLBIT).