On the way to industrial independence

The International Scientific and Technical Conference held in Minsk gathered 170 participants from eight countries

Sanctions force Belarus to take initiative and find opportunities that were available before but remained virtually ignored. The lack of interest in leveraging the existing opportunities earlier is related to the fact that it was possible to import turnkey technology and equipment from the West. Now we have to discard the stereotype of our technological backwardness, roll up our sleeves and engage in technological development single-handedly using our own intellect. Everything has turned out to be not as difficult as it seemed. This year’s scientific and technological forum, which brought together an array of specialised industrial exhibitions under its roof, has become the most eventful in recent years both in terms of the number of exhibitors and visitors.

At the opening of the industrial exhibition, Piotr Vityaz, Academician of Belarus’ National Academy of Sciences, noted that manufacturing means of production is the backbone of industry. It is hard to talk about full-fledged economic independence in the absence of domestically produced machinery, equipment, and technologies. According to Mikhail Myatlikov, Chairman of the Belarusian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, it is necessary to strengthen the industrial sovereignty of the country, “The major role in this process belongs to mechanical engineering, metalworking and machine tool construction.” Machine tool industry encompasses practically all engineering and industrial areas — welding, cutting, high-precision surface treatment, precision mechanics, electrical equipment, sensors, microelectronics control systems. Strictly speaking, Belarusian machines are still far from being fully localised, at least what concerns advanced models. Let us not dissemble — it is not so long ago that domestic technological equipment used a lot of imported components and assemblies, and most of them were high-tech.

Aleksandr Kulevsky

The exhibition showcased both domestically made developments and Russian analogues, with some really interesting innovative solutions. After all, our engineering school has remained very solid since Soviet times. The potential has been preserved. By the way, Belarusian high-tech engineering and R&D companies were very successful in selling their intellectual products to the West before the aggravation of the international situation. Western companies were eager and queued up to buy Belarusian developments. We have knowledge and ideas — thus, the time has come to apply them effectively within our country and in co-operation with friendly states.
Domestic manufacturers of machine tools and technological equipment, accessories, and industrial equipment were widely represented at the exhibition, such as manufacturers of computer numerical control (CNC) columns for machine tools from Russia, Belarusian sensors and elements of intelligent systems from our scientists. Companies from South Korea, China, Türkiye, Italy, and Sweden brought their developments, as well. The contours of new co-operation are gradually emerging, except that the dynamics of the technological adaptation process to new realities should have been more intensive.

ALEKSANDR KULEVSKY

By Vladimir Volchkov