Business news

MINSK, 7 October (BelTA) - Belarus and Saint Petersburg signed the program of cooperation in trade, economy, science and humanitarian affairs for 2017-2021. The program was signed following the ninth meeting of the Belarus-Saint Petersburg Business Cooperation Council chaired by Belarusian Prime minister Andrei Kobyakov and Saint Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko in Minsk on 7 October, BelTA has learned.

The program provides for more than 50 activities across all industry sectors. “This roadmap envisages a number of investment projects,” the Prime Minister said in a press briefing following the meeting.

For example, Detskoselsky Concern is implementing the projects to produce and process milk, potatoes and vegetables in Belarus and to arrange their subsequent delivery to Saint Petersburg. During the meeting, an agreement was reached to strengthen the manufacturing ties between Belarus and Saint Petersburg and to set up joint ventures based on the examples of successful joint projects. These include a project between BelAZ and PAO Zvezda to create a new generation of diesel engines, and a project between the Belarusian Production Association Planar and Saint Petersburg company Avangard to develop a joint center for micro-system engineering.

Promising is the project of cooperation between the Baranovichi machine-tool plant and the Komsomolskaya Pravda research company to manufacture automatic molding machines. “The Russian company already uses the Belarusian solution to manufacture parts from plastics. Now the plan is to start manufacturing such devices in Russia. The project will allow the Russian company to completely give up on the unnecessary imports,” the Belarusian Prime Minister said.