Opinions & Interviews

“Belarus and Russia have enough internal reserves to restore the pace of development in the Union State and put the bilateral trade back on the path of sustainable growth,” said Tatiana Golikova. Thanks to the close economic relations, Belarus has become fourth largest trading partner of Russia. Russia ranks first among foreign trading partners of Belarus. Making use of the integration and its main advantages is a key factor in promoting the economic growth in the Union State. The two countries need to increase the share of high-tech goods, to replace foreign components, especially in sensitive areas such as the automotive, agriculture, agricultural machine-building, electronics, light industry, etc. In this context, the Union State programs play an important role. their key task is to create an innovative products,” she noted. All in all, the two countries have already implemented more than 50 such programs, performed works worth over RUB25 billion. For 2017-2020 Belarus and Russia have prepared the concepts of the programs in nanomaterials, electronics, automotive components, etc.

“Despite the difficult economic situation, funding of the Union State budget has nto been cut this year. On 1 January this year the new regulations regarding the formation and execution of the Union State budget came into force. I hope this will help solve the issues on the agenda of the Union State,” Tatiana Golikova said.

In her words, this year the watchdogs of the two countries will develop the first conclusion on the draft Union State budget 2017. The two countries continue efforts to improve the budgetary process. A number of normative legal acts are under consideration and can be adopted before the end of 2016. The two member states are completing the coordination of the draft document on temporary Treasury-based budget execution and have already worked out a draft document on introducing amendments to the formation of the Union State emergency fund. The parties also coordinated the order of applying measures of enforcement for inappropriate expenditure. Two normative acts on accounting are being prepared. There are also plans to update the legislation that regulates the legal status and social guarantees of the Union State officials, the procurement sector, and asset management.

On 20 October the participants of the meeting approved the plan of joint action for the State Control Committee of Belarus and the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation for 2017. The document envisages a number of joint and parallel auditing events.

The joint session was held as a video conference. Participants discussed the fulfillment of the Union State budget in 2015. The event was chaired by heads of the auditing agencies Leonid Anfimov and Tatiana Golikova. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Belarus to Russia Igor Petrishenko, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia to Belarus Alexander Surikov, Deputy State Secretary of the Union State Ivan Bambiza, representatives of the Permanent Committee of the Union State of Belarus and Russia and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia were also present during the session.