Working Papers
Creative and cultural industries in Belarus: the pathways to growth
Currently, there’s no legal national definition of creative and cultural sector in Belarus though in the worldwide context these economic activities are among the most actively developing, promising and contributing to Sustainable Development Goals. This paper is an attempt, based on international experience, to identify the creative and cultural economic activities in Belarus and to assess their size and development trends from the perspectives of output, employment (including regional dimension) and trade, based on open-source data for 2016-2023 period, as well as their impact on economic growth using “Input-Output” and CGE model calculations based on 2020 data.
The assessed size of the creative and cultural sector in Belarus in 2023 was 5.9% of GDP and 5.8% of employment, excluding the IT sector, the figures were 2.1% and 3.6% respectively. Growth of expenditure on the creative and cultural sector significantly and positively influences gross output and to a lesser extent gross value added, but creative and cultural sector expansion without sustaining structural transformation can lead to mixed results, particularly, the redistribution of resources in favor of more developed sector such as IT may lead to a decline of gross output. Creative and cultural sector development in Belarus was uneven: it grew mostly due to IT during the period considered, while other activities were either growing at slower pace (advertisement and market studies, other professional, scientific and technical activities) or stagnating (architecture and technical analysis; publishing activities; mass media and cultural activities); from a regional perspective, Minsk dominated across all indicators. The majority of creative and cultural sector’s activities appeared vulnerable to shocks of COVID-19 and increasing domestic and geopolitical instability. Besides external factors, the difference in development of creative and cultural sector’s activities in Belarus was due not only to the absence of a common legal framework, but also to differences in institutional conditions and the extent of state intervention.