Belarus’ PM: it’s important not to miss Union State strategic development
Belarus and Russia should not miss the strategic development of the Union State – as stated by Belarus’ Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko during a meeting with his Russian counterpart Mikhail Mishustin as part of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council session in Almaty
“We should not miss a very important thing: the strategic development of the Union State. Because of the current issues of finance and trade barriers, according to our assessment, we do not pay enough attention to co-ordinating the creation of joint strategies for the development of industries, primarily industries of the future. These are microelectronics, pharmaceuticals, IT, and automotive industry,” noted the PM.
Roman Golovchenko said that one of the main tasks that countries were forced to solve last year was the replacement of critical imports, “Over the year, the volume of mutual deliveries of such goods amounted to about Br1.2bn. We did this as part of anti-crisis and urgent measures. I believe that it is necessary to strengthen the work on the co-ordination of import substitution. As for the projects that Russia lends to for implementation in Belarus, now twelve passports have been agreed. For some, we’re getting ready to start sampling. Passports are still being prepared for four.”
Roman Golovchenko proposed to synchronise sectoral import substitution programmes, “We analysed those twenty programmes and see that some of the commodity items can be completely covered by Belarusian enterprises. In the same way, Russian enterprises can enter the Belarusian import substitution programmes. I propose to intensify work in this direction, and it is necessary to move on to the implementation of joint investment projects in microelectronics, machine tool building, medical and pharmaceutical industries. These are complex areas. It is necessary to decide on the executors and instruments of financing, co-financing. We have to build a track for several years. And we need to join forces in the creation and development of advanced sci-tech solutions in various sectors of the economy.”
