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Prime minister: Belarus has secured a surplus in trade with Russia for the first time ever

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MINSK, 12 January (BelTA) – Belarus has secured a surplus in trade with Russia for the first time ever. Prime Minister of Belarus Roman Golovchenko mentioned it during a government conference hosted by Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko to review the fulfillment of integration programs of the Union State of Belarus and Russia, BelTA has learned.

In his report Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko underlined that time had proven the correctness of the chosen policy: despite serious challenges, sanctions, restrictions, and so on Belarus and Russia continue advancing cooperation in all spheres of the social and economic sphere and produce results. “In January-November 2022 the mutual trade in merchandise and services reached a historic high of $45 billion. I believe that once statistics for the 12 months is summarized, we will be able to exceed $50 billion,” Roman Golovchenko said.

Roman Golovchenko said that Belarus is seeing a surplus in trade with Russia for the first time ever as the export of merchandise and services exceeds import in cost terms. On the whole, in 2022 Belarus’ merchandise export to Russia rose in physical terms and cost terms. “A trade deficit has always been one of the key problems for us in trade with Russia. We imported more than we sold. In some years the gap could be as high as $7 billion,” the Belarusian head of government noted.

This is why Belarus had to fix the misbalance by trading with some other countries, the president pointed out. “Which is not very simple when the world is divided economically. But we have such balance for the last year,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

Roman Golovchenko stated that Belarusian manufacturers had managed to find ways to step up operations on the Russian market and close attention is paid to Russia’s regions. “Work with Russian regions under your guidance is producing fruits. Work with every region is closely monitored, including the work of the Belarusian embassy in the Russian Federation. The system is well-established. I am convinced it will work just as well this year,” he added.

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