Business news

MINSK, 2 February (BelTA) – Belarus and Pakistan have real opportunities for raising the bilateral trade to $1 billion by 2020, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said as he met with Chairman of the Senate of Pakistan Mian Raza Rabbani on 2 February, BelTA has learned.

“We should think carefully about ways to strengthen our relations,” the head of state noted as he welcomed the Pakistani guest.

Alexander Lukashenko noted that Belarus has established good, friendly relations with the Pakistani leadership - the president and the prime minister. The countries are considering ways to step up cooperation in all fields.

“We certainly need your support. I know that parliaments play a big role in the two countries, and I would like to ask you to monitor Pakistan’s effort to implement the roadmap that we developed for our short- and medium-term cooperation,” Alexander Lukashenko said. He pointed out that Belarus and Pakistan have an agreement to lay a foundation for trade and economic relations by 2020 and raise the bilateral trade to $1 billion.

“We have enough cooperation potential and real opportunities for this. We can even exceed this target. We cannot just make declarations. We should work to achieve this target by mapping out specific cooperation areas and establishing amounts of goods that we can sell to each other,” the Belarusian leader said.

Alexander Lukashenko added that there are no closed topics in the cooperation between Belarus and Pakistan. “We can cooperate in all areas. We have almost no differences today. However, we should start working as time goes fast, and the year 2020 is not far away,” the Belarusian head of state stressed.

He expressed hope that MPs of the two countries who are responsible for this cooperation will step up their efforts.