Business news

MINSK, 4 September (BelTA) – Plans have been made to open new meat-packing plants and poultry farms by the end of the year in order to sell their products to China, BelTA learned from Aleksei Bogdanov, Head of the Central Office for Foreign Economic Activities of the Belarusian Agriculture and Food Ministry, on 4 September.

A Belarusian delegation led by Agriculture and Food Minister Leonid Zayats visited China last week. “We’ve been to Beijing and Hong Kong. We met with the head of the General Administration of Customs of China. It is the agency in charge of merchandise certification. We reached an agreement that we will try to expand the list of Belarusian enterprises, which can sell beef and poultry meat to China, by the end of the year. Besides, we will polish everything by the end of the year so that we could sell chilled beef to China,” said the official.

Belarusian companies have been recently authorized to sell beef to China. About 100 tonnes of beef has been sold to China already. “Chinese customers are happy with the product. So we are going to increase the volume of shipments,” said Aleksei Bogdanov.

Belarusian poultry farms can export frozen bird carcasses to China for now but the deliveries have not begun yet. “Chinese customers love giblets and carcass parts best of all. We are now working and intend to start selling giblets to China by the end of the year,” explained the official.

Work is in progress on selling Belarusian agricultural products to Hong Kong. “During the visit we agreed that we would discuss investments. Pilot projects to make agricultural products and sell them to China may be launched in Belarus,” said the official.

Two Belarusian meat-packing plants are authorized to sell beef to China – OOO Veles-Meat and OAO Mogilev Meat-Packing Plant. Five poultry farms are authorized to sell their products to China – Agrokombinat Dzerzhinskiy, the Vitebsk broiler poultry factory Ganna, the Zhemchuzhny-based poultry factory Druzhba, SZAO Servolux, and a broiler poultry factory in Smolevichi, Minsk Oblast.