St Petersburg to host fair of Belarusian products in February 2023

Nadezhda Lazarevich said: “St Petersburg Days will take place in Minsk in April 2023. Business meetings, a business forum, and cultural events will take place as part of it. Famous theater actors from St Petersburg will come and we will offer them a venue in Minsk so that they could delight our residents with their performances. We intend to bring a fair of our manufacturers of food and light industry goods to St Petersburg in February 2023. We intend to time the fair to the Maslenitsa festival. The fair will take place in Moskovsky District of St Petersburg. We have very good twin-city relations between Minsk's Moskovsky District and St Petersburg's Moskovsky District. We have agreed with the administration of the district that we will delight residents of their city with our good and tasty products. And certainly with light industry goods. Flax goods will surely be represented. National events in the form of performances of our artists may be arranged in order to make it a true fair.”

Sales of Belarusian machines, vehicles, and equipment were also discussed. “We've once again reiterated that [the Belarusian automobile engineering company] MAZ will ship the entire volume of the vehicles St Petersburg has bought by 20 December. They also confirmed they might buy lifts from Mogilevliftmash. I will invite the head of the company and we are going to discuss the presence of Mogilev-made lifts in St Petersburg. Some component assembly or a dealership may be used. We will discuss all of that. But St Petersburg needs to replace lifts in old houses. Moreover, since many European manufacturers have gone away, market niches are opening up and our manufacturers should more actively fill them in,” the deputy head of the Minsk city administration explained. “School meals were discussed. The St Petersburg vice governor oversees this matter among other things. Private companies tend to take care of it over there. We will find out how these things are organized over there and will share the best practices. We will arrange a contest between Minsk's school meal factory and St Petersburg's. We will see what dishes they cook and will arrange sampling. We would like to organize it in Minsk's territory, we will invite them to visit us and will organize such an event.”

Nadezhda Lazarevich added: “We've also discussed a number of economic matters regarding which we are going to build relations next year in order to increase trade turnover between Minsk and St Petersburg.”

A Belarusian delegation is expected to visit Technopark today. The official said: “We will share the best practices, compare how our Technopark and theirs operate. St Petersburg is hosting the 4th international municipal forum of BRICS. A meeting with the Murmansk mayor took place where we once again reaffirmed interest in mutual relations, in selling our machines, vehicles, and equipment. The first batch of municipal vehicles has already been shipped. They are also interested in our construction workers, in buying low-rise houses made by Bellesbumprom. A Minsk delegation will visit Murmansk in Q1 2023 in order to stipulate sales of machines and vehicles and the organization of construction work in contracts. We've also met with the mayor of Chelyabinsk. They have a tractor factory of their own, too. Since imported components are no longer available, they are actively looking for substitutes. I am convinced we will be able to arrange an online meeting for a more thorough discussion. They have a very good practice of involving small and medium private companies in manufacturing the parts Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant needs. It is necessary to take a closer look at how they use this function in order to also involve our own SMEs.”