Trade balance between Russia and Belarus remains stable — PM

MOGILEV, May 12. /TASS/. The trade balance between Russia and Belarus remains stable despite decline of the turnover in dollar value because of ruble rate weakening, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.

"The decline in mutual trade volume is recorded for several years. Such decline, in dollar terms in the first instance, is related to weakened rates of national currencies and change in prices for energy resources. Nevertheless, our balance remains fairly stable in physical terms," Medvedev said.

Upsides and downsides are in the dynamics of the trade turnover between two countries, the Prime Minister said. In particular, Russia and Belarus increased their shares in the mutual turnover by 1-2% approximately. "This is a good result, evidencing in itself that our economies are developing jointly," Medvedev said.

Issues of industrial cooperation, transfer of technologies, production chains and high tech products remain important, the Russian Prime Minister said. Not merely major companies of Russia and Belarus but small and medium businesses should also take part in that, Medvedev said. The action plan for development of small and medium businesses implemented in 2013-2015 was focused on that, he said. "We need to continue this work in the current period," Medvedev added.

"The most important now is to ensure coordination of our efforts within the framework of the Union State and the Eurasian Economic Union," Medvedev said. "We need to support industrial output of our countries, investment cooperation, innovative cooperation, and development of agriculture in two states, and to deal with elimination of existing trade barriers," he added.

Russia and Belarus will continue implementing joint investments projects, Medvedev said.

"We proceed with implementation of major programs. These are such large-scale projects as the nuclear power plant construction and other major investments tasks countries are facing. We also create new programs," Medvedev said.

A research and technology program for development of automobile electronics was particularly approved today, the Russian Prime Minister said. The program goal is to create a component base for vehicle control and safety systems. "This component base is actually fully imported at present. We have opportunities to establish joint production in this sphere. I believe this is highly important and promising for economies of our countries," Medvedev said.

Challenging and encouraging points are present in economic cooperation between our countries, Medvedev said. The trade turnover decline in dollar value due to weakened national currencies rate is challenging. At the same time, the turnover declined slightly in physical terms as of the last year-end and its growth is noted from the year beginning, Medvedev added.