Sandwiched between the EU to the west and Russia to the east, and boasting an inexpensive and highly skilled workforce, numerous opportunities for privatisation, as well as lower debt levels than many Western countries, the Belarusian economy has much in the way of untapped potential. And operating in the country does not require dealing with stifling bureaucracy – Belarus ranked 69th globally in the World Bank’s Doing Business ranking for 2012 – which provides an indication of the ease with which an entrepreneur could open and run a small to medium-sized enterprise – placing it below Kazakhstan in 47th and Georgia in 16th, but above the average of 77th for eastern Europe and central Asia, and considerably higher than Russia in 122nd.
In July, Standard & Poor's also upgraded Belarus’s short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit rating from 'C' to 'B'. This was a result of a revision in criteria concerning links between long and short-term sovereign credit ratings rather than an improvement in Belarus’ creditworthiness in the short term. However, the ratings agency also affirmed its 'B-' rating on long-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on Belarus and, perhaps most importantly, a 'stable' outlook.
