English

Lukashenka meets with prime minister of Kazakhstan

Alyaksandr Lukashenka on March 15 met with the prime minister of Kazakhstan, Karim Masimov, who had arrived in Minsk to take part in a session of the Council of Ministers of the Belarusian-Russian Union State and a session of the Interstate Council of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) to be held in the Belarusian capital city later in the day, BelaPAN said.

The two countries will be able to considerably increase their trade within the framework of the Common Economic Zone (CEZ) of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, Mr. Lukashenka said at the meeting, according to the government’s news agency BelTA.

There are a lot of areas in which Belarus and Kazakhstan are successfully carrying out joint projects, Mr. Lukashenka said, noting that Minsk was proposing adding new projects to this list.

Belarus is involved in more than 30 joint projects aimed at industrializing Kazakhstan, he added.

“We are ready to work on a larger scale in Kazakhstan,” he said. “Our experience of work in Kazakhstan suggests that it is the best country where we can implement our agreements.”

Mr. Lukashenka pointed out that Belarusian-Kazakh trade reached almost $1 billion in 2010. “I think we’ll be able to considerably exceed this level in the framework of the CEZ,” he said.

Mr. Masimov said that Kazakhstan was interested in increasing production cooperation with Belarus. The current high level of Kazakh-Belarusian trade is evidence that both countries are interested to implement the agreements that the leaders of the two states have reached, he noted.

“Belarus and Kazakhstan have something to learn and take from each other,” he said.