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Belarus to begin financing import substitution projects from Russian loan this year

On November 16, Russia and Belarus signed an agreement on a Russian loan worth 105 billion Russia rubles too fund import substitution projects

MINSK, December 4. /TASS/. Belarus hopes to begin financing its import substitution projects from a Russian loan before the end of the current year, Belarusian Finance Minister Yury Seliverstov said on Sunday.

"We hope that we will be able to begin financing before the end of the year," he said in an interview with the Belarus-1 television channel.

"Bearing in mind that it will be a loan, we will have to repay this money and earn some profit from it (projects - TASS)," he said, adding that there are some 15 projects to be financed.

On November 16, Russia and Belarus signed an agreement on a Russian loan worth 105 billion Russia rubles too fund import substitution projects.

According to earlier reports, the two countries outline a list of joint import substitution projects to a sum of 1.3 billion US dollars.

Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko said in early November that a sum of some 1.2 billion US dollars will go to finance civil import substitution projects and some 200 million US dollars will be spent on military projects in the sphere of microelectronics.

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