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According to the UNDP
Human Development Report 2004, published on July 15, 2004, Belarus:
– has the lowest among
CIS countries total debt service as percent of GDP (1.4 percent only);
– takes the lead
of all CIS countries over adult literacy (99.7 percent);
– passes all CIS
countries, as well as such EU countries as Latvia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary,
Czech Republic, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Luxemburg,
Austria, Great Britain, Ireland, Belgium, and the Netherlands in public
expenditure on education (6 percent of GDP);
– is the first among CIS countries on such socially meaningful index as health expenditure per capita (464 dollars);
– has the lowest
among CIS countries under-five mortality rate;
– 100 percent of
the population of Belarus have sustainable access to an improved water source,
so far this figure has not been achieved by any other CIS country;
– leads among CIS
countries and some EU member states (Lithuania and Poland) by the amount of
telephone mainlines (299 per 1000 people);
– has twice as
many Internet users compared with Russia, and 4 times more than Ukraine.
According to the Vienna
Institute of International Relations report (Vienna Institut für
Internationale Vergleiche), published in July 2004, divergence of income of
different groups of population of Belarus is not substantial: Gini coefficient
(index of differentiation of income level of different groups of population,
which serves as a characteristic of social injustice) has remained practically
unchanged since 1992 and made up 0.34 in 2001, which is much lower than in
Russia (0.52) and Ukraine (0.45).
Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in August 2004 placed Belarus on top of
CIS countries by the possibility of the population to obtain valuable
nutrition. In particular, the number of undernourished people in Belarus is 2
percent of the population, in Russia – 4 percent, in Ukraine and Turkmenistan –
6 percent, in Kyrgyzstan – 8 percent, in Moldova – 11 percent, in Kazakhstan
and Azerbaijan – 21 percent, in Uzbekistan – 25 percent, in Georgia – 26
percent, in Armenia and Tajikistan – 70 percent.