MINSK, 10 November (BelTA) - Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz suggested setting up a joint Cuban-Belarusian venture in agriculture during talks with Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko in Minsk on 10 November, BelTA has learned.
"There are the prerequisites for the development of cooperation and bringing it to a new level. These include the historical ties that unite us, the earlier visit of the Cuban president to Belarus, our meeting in Sochi and the recent visit of the Belarusian minister of foreign affairs to Cuba. I concur with the Belarusian president who at today's meeting said that the current level of development of economic relations is not satisfactory. But we have already identified several priorities on which we can move forward. We need to bring these priority projects to the preparatory stage and decide how we will launch them," Manuel Marrero Cruz said.
According to him, the current agreement on mutual supplies helps to develop cooperation, especially in the field of biotechnology and the sale of medicines. "We have drafted a protocol to increase the volume of supplies and to expand their range and the number of participating enterprises," the Cuban prime minister said.
At the same time, agriculture remains the first priority for the Cuban side. "We have the minister on our delegation who is in charge of identifying projects in the food industry. Companies of the Belarusian meat and dairy industries are currently participating in the exhibition in Cuba," Manuel Marrero Cruz noted. “We have a specific proposal: let’s set up a joint Belarusian-Cuban enterprise. In Havana, we have a wonderful dairy complex, good infrastructure, but its capacities are underused as there is a lack of raw materials. The idea is to sign an agreement and set up a joint venture for the Belarusian industry to supply raw materials, mainly milk powder and meat products, to be further processed on-site and supplied to the Caribbean region.”