Business news

MINSK, 28 November (BelTA) – Belarusian equipment is absolutely competitive, Belarus’ Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko said in an interview with the Belarus 1 TV channel.

“In terms of the price-quality-maintenance ratio, our equipment is absolutely competitive,” Vladimir Semashko said.

He noted that over the past seven years, Belarus has produced agricultural machinery to the tune of $23.7 billion. “Of this amount, $7.9 billion worth of equipment was produced for the domestic agriculture industry. Two-thirds of the total was sold internationally,” he said.

Analyzing the structure of the export of engineering enterprises over the past five years, Vladimir Semashko noted that the share of Russia has declined from 58% to 52%. “The export to other countries has increased by 6%. This shows that the producers have been working to diversify their sales markets,” he added.

Today Belarus supplies engineering products to 101 countries. “New markets open up but, unfortunately, our companies either decline orders because they lack working capital and because they cannot take out a bank loan on good terms, or they accept the orders but fail to fulfill them thus discrediting themselves on these markets,” Vladimir Semashko noted.

This issue was discussed at the meeting presided by the head of state. “I believe (and we talked about this at the meeting with the president) that it is necessary to allow installment or deferral plans on the loans. Thus the enterprises will be able to keep the working capital instead of spending it to pay the interest rates on loans,” the Deputy Prime Minister said.