MOSCOW, July 13 (RIA Novosti) – Belarus is set to consider a controversial new approach to cutting unemployment – taxing the jobless, local media report.
The idea was voiced on Friday by Prime Minister Mikhail Myasnikovich at a meeting with local officials, the BELTA state news agency reported.
The actual number of people who are jobless in the isolated European state is difficult to ascertain.
Official Belarusian statistics in 2011 put the unemployment rate at 0.6 percent, while a Gallup survey released the following year found “the actual unemployment is approximately 40 times higher than the official.”
“We need to correct this situation. One way is to introduce a tax on the unemployed,” BELTA cited Myasnikovich as saying.
He also outlined other measures to boost employment levels, including raising wages and investing in new enterprises in the regions, local media reported.
“A minimum of 10 small enterprises should be set up each year in each region. We have a lot of raw materials which we do not use effectively; they could be used to make construction materials … for example, which we currently import,” BELTA cited him as saying.
Belarus, which in 2010 a population of about 9.5 million, has been led by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994.
A January 2013 US government fact-sheet on Belarus notes that "under the Lukashenko regime, the Belarusian authorities have pursued a generally hostile policy toward the private sector and have refused to initiate the basic economic reforms necessary to create a market-based economy."
The United States has applied a variety of sanctions to Belarusian companies and officials over the years due to concerns regarding human rights and has often criticized the country’s slow progress in making the transition to a market economy.
