Belarus COVID-19 Social Safety Nets Response

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The COVID-19 outbreak and the resulting shock to global supply and demand have created extraordinary challenges for Belarus. Thelatest IMF projections for Belarus predict a decline in GDP of about 6 percent. The diminished economic activity is expected toincrease unemployment for workers in both the formal and informal sectors and cause loss of earnings due to shortened work hours.Therefore, the Government is willing to establish new and scale up existing social assistance programs.The proposed project is toinclude two components, short-term measures for immediate response to COVID-19 and associated economic crisis and the long-termmeasures for structural reform of social assistance policy. Component 1. The short-term measures for immediate response to COVID– 19. Existing beneficiaries of the Public Targeted Social Assistance program (GASP, the GMI-type program in Belarus) will beautomatically re-certified for another 6-month eligibility period, thus avoiding the need to apply for re-certification in personand minimizing the health risk for both the applicants and social workers in the process. Furthermore, for the new applicants, theincome reference period for the purposes of determining eligibility under GASP will be reduced, so that families become eligiblefor the benefit earlier during the period of falling incomes (from 12 months to 3 months).Component 2. The long-term measures forstructural reform of social assistance policy would include increasing the coverage and adequacy of the GASP program whichcurrently excludes a large share of the poor, especially families with children. The proposed measures include:a. Increase theincome eligibility threshold by 15 percent for families with many children to cover households that are at risk of poverty andsubstantially increase the benefit amount for such families.b. Extend the program duration from 6 months to 12 months.It isexpected that the project would cover around 100,000 who will benefit from extended social assistance enrollment and more generouspayments.