According to the results of the poll, 58.7% of respondents want to be employed in the public sector of the economy, and 30.0% in the private sector, although at present 51.6% of respondents work for state-run companies and 9.3% for private businesses. As it can be seen, people’s aspirations concerning the public sector almost match the real situation, but more people would like to work at a private business than do so now.
This orientation is most clearly popular among young people: only 37.1% of them would like to be employed in the public sector, while 52.4% focus their career plans on the private sector. Note that at present 54% of young people work at state-run companies and only 15.4% at private businesses. It is clear that young people have more adequate views of the current economic environment and are able to make reliable forecasts concerning the economy’s future. Therefore, a change of generations will bring about stronger private business.
Another indicator of this is that only 43.6% of respondents at large would like to run a business, while 70.9% of young people are willing to do so. At the same time only 21.3% of the youth and 48.9% of respondents at large would like to be fully dependant on the state (Table 1).
Table 1. Respondents’ opinion of the private business, %
According to the majority of respondents, Belarus has not yet crated favorable conditions for the operation of private businesses. Only 7% of respondents said that these conditions improved over the last two or three years. The rest said that they deteriorated. Over 30% of respondents believed that the state introduced new harsh legislation regulating the operation of private businesses, over 25% said they felt stronger arbitrariness of various government agencies towards private businessmen, and almost 40% mentioned a fall of people’s consumer capacity. These are major hindrances to the development of private entrepreneurship.
Nevertheless the results of the poll allow us to make the following conclusions: neither the anti-business official propaganda, nor harsh economic and legal conditions, bans and limitations can eliminate a liking for private business and having a real source of income to provide for their families in people, especially the youth.