Azernews.Az

By Kamila Aliyeva

Kazakhstan and Belarus aim to further improve their trade and business relations as Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who is on an official visit to Minsk, held a meeting with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.

The meeting was focused on trade relations and development of industrial cooperation.

Kazakh leader expressed gratitude for the invitation to visit Belarus noting that his visit coincided with the 25th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“Today, as many as 260 Belarusian enterprises operate in Kazakhstan, there are products of Belarusian agriculture on our counters. Shops with Belarusian furniture can be seen in all cities,” he said.

“I know that today our business people will sign contracts for the supply of dozens of BelAZ trucks and new machinery to Kazakhstan, and we will conclude a contract on the localization of products, the establishment of assembly plants. Our relations reached a high strategic level,” the Kazakh president said noting that there are no obstacles for their development.

Nazarbayev also touched upon the topic of trade turnover.

“There were really difficult times, a crisis, turnover fell, but for ten months of this year it rose by 60 percent,” he added.

In turn, Lukashenko expressed hope that more powerful trade and economic basis for Belarus-Kazakhstan relations will be created.

“At last we are starting to overcome the recession in our trade and economic relations. Your visit will help us increase the trade turnover. We have everything for it. Our specialists, members of the government, who are present here, will give us options. Good proposals are available. If we accept them, it will be a considerable step forward towards creating more powerful trade and economic basis of our relations,” he said.

In January-September 2017 the bilateral trade totaled $485.8 million, up 64.8 percent from the same period in 2016. The Belarusian exports made up $425.4 million. Belarus' major exports include milk and dairy products, tractors and tractive units, trucks, meat and meat products, furniture, grain harvesters, sugar, medications, tires, lifts, plastic containers, ceramic tiles and many more.

The bilateral trade in services exceeded $128 million, up 2.1 times. The Belarusian exports reached almost $100 million.

The Belarusian commodity distribution network in Kazakhstan includes 36 entities set up with the Belarusian capital, and also more than 160 facilities of the dealer network. There are eight joint assembly plants. Belarus is home to 36 companies with Kazakhstan's capital including 11 joint ventures and 25 foreign companies.

---

Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz