Minister: Belarus-Russia trade is close to a record

Belarus-Russia trade is close to a record, Belarusian Economy Minister Yuri Chebotar told reporters, BelTA has learned.

“Our trade with Russia is on the rise. We exported maximum volumes last year and the year before. We are on track to break records, with a 12% increase of our export to Russia. However, Russia is also increasing its export to Belarus. We have reached a trade surplus with our main partner. Of course, this is gratifying. First of all, we need to pay attention to those issues that need to be resolved in order to keep ramping up our trade,” noted Yuri Chebotar.

A reminder, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said at the Union State Supreme State Council summit that the bilateral trade in goods and services is going to break records when the final figures for 2023 come out. “According to Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], it exceeded $40 billion in ten months, but if we take the entire year (goods and services), it will approximately be $54 billion. This is truly an all-time high. Such a result was achieved largely thanks to the 28 Union State programs, the implementation of which required taking fundamental decisions. But we still need to develop general criteria for assessing the effectiveness of their implementation,” the Belarusian leader noted.

In January-November 2023 Belarus-Russia trade amounted to $44.29 billion, up by 7.8% year-on-year. The export was estimated at $23.02 billion, the import at $21.27 billion. The export of services amounted to $3.2 billion, the import stood at $2.15 billion. Thus, Belarus had a surplus in trade both in goods and services.