PM: Belarus, Venezuela restarted trade, economic relations

Belarus and Venezuela needed to revitalize trade and economic relations and this task was fulfilled, Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko said following the official visit of Belarus’ delegation to Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, BelTA has learned. “It was necessary to give a fresh start to our trade and economic cooperation. We have no problems in political relations. Quite the opposite, we support each other in every possible way, we have absolute mutual understanding at all international platforms,” the prime minister noted. “At a certain stage, our trade and economic cooperation faced a number of setbacks, because the initial operation scheme of our joint ventures was no longer workable. This had to do with Venezuela’s budget revenues and the impact of sanctions,” the head of government said. “The initial cooperation scheme (when we supplied equipment, vehicle kits to be assembled in Venezuela and purchased by the Venezuelan government), will not work and cannot work on such a scale. We acknowledge this. We need to utilize the capacities that were created before and our Venezuelan partners agree with this. Therefore, we came up with a new operation scheme for our numerous joint ventures,” added Roman Golovchenko, “And we received assurances at all levels that these enterprises will keep going.” According to the prime minister, all that remains to be done is to finesse certain points before moving on to working “in line with a classic commercial scheme”. “We will focus on sales, look for buyers,” he remarked. “We walked through all the joint projects launched during the presidency of Hugo Chavez. We arrived at the conclusion that this legacy of the two presidents - Aleksandr Grigorievich Lukashenko and Hugo Chavez – must not only be preserved, but scaled up, as it was designed from the onset,” Roman Golovchenko explained. The official visit of the prime minister of Belarus to Latin American countries ended on 20 July. Roman Golovchenko toured Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, where cooperation agreements were reached. In particular, Belarus and Venezuela thrashed out plans to restart joint projects in industry and other areas. Agreements on the supply of tractors and milk powder, and cooperation agreements in the pharmaceutical field were inked with Cuba. Contracts for the supply of more than 700 units of equipment worth a total of $85 million were signed in Nicaragua.