Фото: пресс-служба Лукашенко
Belarusian industrial enterprises can participate in Russian programs on an equal footing with organizations from Russia. This was stated by Belarus’s ambassador to Russia Aliaksandr Rahozhnik after reporting to Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
“Last year we resolved the main problem — access for our industry to all programs being implemented in Russia. Today, on the Russian market, Belarusian is equal to Russian. We are competing under normal economic conditions, and the strongest wins,” he said, according to BelTA.
According to him, mutual trade turnover in goods with Russia amounted to $49.2 billion over 11 months, an increase of 2.3%. Belarusian exports rose by 2.3% to nearly $25 billion. The core of Belarusian supplies to the Russian market consisted of cheese and curd products, butter, passenger cars and trucks, petroleum products, and parts and accessories for automobiles and tractors.
“At the beginning or middle of the year, no one expected that we would be able to resolve to a large extent the whole tangle of problems we had and effectively reach a record level of exports not only of goods, but also of services,” he said.
At the same time, he acknowledged that mechanical engineering performed worse than in the previous year.
“But if we assess the results over the past four years as a whole, growth in this area is certainly present. Despite the cooling of the Russian economy, we avoided a serious decline in our export deliveries. By focusing on cooperation with the regions, we nevertheless preserved a solid foundation in our work in this sector as well,” the ambassador explained.
He also spoke about plans in the field of aircraft manufacturing.
“We agreed that an updated program in the field of aircraft manufacturing will be formed through to 2035, which will involve our industrial sector.
We also agreed to create a unified information system that will ensure control over the elimination and creation of duplicate production facilities, so that we develop and complement each other without competing in certain sectors,” Rahozhnik said.