Belarus’s Soviet Economy
Hi guys, 
 I&#x27;m from Belarus, co-own a software development company in HighTechPark in Minsk and would like to drop my &quot;five pennies&quot; here.<p>First of all, as we all live in diff countries, we have diff perception of what is good or bad.<p>Moreover, we are live in humanism-driven era, that means that &quot;there is no authority expcept of me and my feelings&quot;.<p>In Middle Ages God and Priest told you want to do and what is beautiful, good or bad.<p>In Socialism, Nationalism or Communism the Ruling Party told you what to do.<p>In Liberalism and more democratic countries Capitalism and MNC (Multinational corporations) gaining more power and &quot;providing the offer you can not refuse&quot;.<p>Whereas in Middle Ages there was no growth, now everyone is obsessed with growth. 
And we would know the answer &quot;who was right&quot; only after we would come into a lack of resources and an ecological disaster due to consumption rates.<p>So, as I&#x27;m not an authority for you, just focus on your feelings when you read the text below.<p>I would say, that Belarus lives in autocrasy, rather dictatorship. The President doesn&#x27;t tell everyone what to do. We all have a freedom of choice, can study, learn foreign languages and go abroad.<p>Many people did that, doing that and will be doing that. 
The country is facing a challenge how to solve that question.<p>Singapore&#x27;s advice would be: bring more investors to the country to build enterprizes. There are issues with that.  
Same time, there opened &quot;The Great Stone&quot; project, where you can invest $500K into a manufacturing enterprize and get many tax exemptions for many years (terms are very attractive and competitive in World). You would get access to low-cost workforce and get profits.<p>Could be better? Yes. 
Could be worse? Yes. 
Can we improve? Yes.<p>ICT industry is one of the growth drivers and  magnets retaining some of young people from moving abroad.<p>President&#x27;s decree #8 prolonged preferences for HighTechPark (HTP) until 2049, gave legislation to cryptocurrency ventures (although there is only one cryptocurrency exchange so far) and let our companies buy ads, hosting and other digital services from abroad without paying 35% tax on top.<p>3 years ago there were 160 companies in HTP, whereas now ±600. 
IT sector is booming.<p>Not only as R&amp;D or devcenters as in other ex-USSR countries, but also product-based companies and startups.<p>We have some remarkable stories:<p>1) Apalon (acquired by IAC) was in #10 in the World by downloads in AppleStore.<p>2) Mobile Games made in Belarus were downloaded 3 500 000 000 (3.5bln) times. That is not only Wargaming. We have plenty of other games studios (including our own subsidiary).<p>3) EPAM (10bln evaluation)<p>4) Wargaming (was mentioned above)<p>5) exp(capital) and a group of its companies have a turnover of $2bln (yes, billion per month) according to it&#x27;s owner Victor Prokopenya.<p>6) There is a good food brand: Santa Fish and Santa Bremor with a 1bln turnover per year (they produce products from salmon, $1bln also includes another milk brand &quot;Savushkin&quot;)<p>7) Viber (acq by Rakuten), PandaDoc, Maps.me (acq. by Mail.ru), MSQRD (acq by Facebook), AIMatter (acq by Google)<p>Total turnover of HTP companies would be $2bln+ this year (the initial investment in HTP was $40K and a small cabinet with a table and a chair, not millions like in Russia&#x27;s Skolkovo gone astray).<p>I think for a country, which is only 27 years old these results are exceeding all possible expectations.<p>In 2016 I did  a research on local IT market, you can view it here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slideshare.net&#x2F;alexgrakoff5&#x2F;belarus-it-outsourcing-industry-2016" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slideshare.net&#x2F;alexgrakoff5&#x2F;belarus-it-outsourci...</a><p>Inspired by that research, EY did there own: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ey.com&#x2F;Publication&#x2F;vwLUAssets&#x2F;ey-it-industry-in-belarus-2017-and-beyond&#x2F;$FILE&#x2F;ey-it-industry-in-belarus-2017-and-beyond.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ey.com&#x2F;Publication&#x2F;vwLUAssets&#x2F;ey-it-industry-in-...</a><p>The main limits of growth for my company is: we don&#x27;t have a foreign office and can&#x27;t sell at a higher price at the moment and the speed of salary growth in IT-industry. There is no President involved in that.<p>I would say, many businesses have benefits now because of a lower salaries (for some period of time). And I can&#x27;t imagine now hiring a sales in US for $200K&#x2F;year.<p>Btw, I think now it is more cost-efficient to have a Belarus company, owning a US company to sell digital services. You would have to pay 1% income tax and 9% dividend tax.<p>Do you know many stories of successfully built countries from scratch without &quot;open source framework&quot;? 
Singapore, and maybe a few others.<p>Do you think that US is only good with the maximum personal freedom?<p>As you have a freedom market, you get: 
- constant growth of educational costs
- constant growth of health insurance costs ($28k&#x2F;y for a family) 
- no limits for mobile plans&#x2F;TV plans (it can cost $100&#x2F;m in NY and $200 for TV)<p>You can read more on that topic here: 
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eand.co&#x2F;why-america-is-the-worlds-first-poor-rich-country-17f5a80e444a" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eand.co&#x2F;why-america-is-the-worlds-first-poor-rich-co...</a><p>The cost of property is so high, that you have to work 20 or more years to afford it if you are not a Googler.<p>The cost of US effectiveness is that one can easily get homeless. They say &quot;our society tends to support mistakes and getting bankcrupt&quot;.  
I&#x27;ve been in 10 countries during last year and never saw such amount of homeless people as in San Francisco, California.<p>And it can take 7 to 10 years to rebuild your credit score: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.experian.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;ask-experian&#x2F;credit-education&#x2F;improving-credit&#x2F;improve-credit-score&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.experian.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;ask-experian&#x2F;credit-education...</a><p>Eventually, everything is quite complicated, but in general during last 10 years many positive changes happen and this is noticed by all people who come to Belarus.<p>Our country has a big potential in many industries, not only IT, just not everyone has the right knowledge to make profit on that potential.