MOGILEV, September 29. By the end of 2023, it is planned to reach a trade turnover between Belarus and the Russian Federation of goods and services at the level of $55 billion, said the Ambassador of Belarus to Russia Dmitry Krutoy.
“Under the pressure of sanctions, we ended last year with record figures — an increase in trade turnover by 13-14 points. Literally today the figures for eight months of this year appeared: also plus 13 points, in fact plus 3.5 billion dollars. According to experts, we will come out ( in 2023) for the turnover of goods 47-48 billion and in the service sector 7 billion. That is, the total volume of foreign trade between our countries has all the signs of reaching 55 billion,» Krutoy said on Friday at a meeting of a high-level group of the Council of Ministers of the Union State ( SG), which takes place in Mogilev.
The head of the Belarusian diplomatic mission emphasized the intensity of Belarusian-Russian contacts at all levels and the implementation of humanitarian projects. In the near future, the humanitarian block of union cooperation will be significantly strengthened, Krutoy said.
He also noted that by the end of this year the issue of mutual recognition of electronic digital signatures should be resolved.
A high-level group of the Council of Ministers of the Union State was created in 2013. This body of the SG discusses current issues of Russian-Belarusian cooperation and union building, considers draft agendas of meetings of the Council of Ministers and the Supreme State Council of the SG, the progress of preparing agreed materials on the agenda of the meetings.
The co-chairs of the group are Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Alexey Overchuk and the Ambassador of Belarus to RF, special representative of the republic on issues of integration cooperation within the Union State, vested with the powers of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Krutoy.
The agenda of the meeting included 13 issues. Among them are the circulation of medicines, the study of the issue of equalizing railway tariffs, the replacement of software from unfriendly countries, the preparation of the draft SG budget for 2024, as well as the organization of transport links Minsk-Vladivostok-Minsk.