BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

14/11/2005

Minsk: Trade between Belarus, Ukraine expected to exceed $2 bln in 2006

Trade between Belarus and Ukraine could exceed $2 billion next year, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Stanislav Stashevsky said following talks with his Belarusian counterpart Friday.

"During the first nine months of this year, the volume of trade has reached $1.3 billion, surpassing the indicator for the whole of 2004," Stashevsky said. "The figure is expected to grow to $1.7 billion by year's end."

Stashevsky said the meeting between the two countries' presidents in Kazan, in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan, several months ago, had given a boost to economic cooperation.

"It gave a kind of impetus to a number of mutually benefiting projects," he said.

Stashevsky and Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko signed an action plan for 2006 for implementing the 1999-2008 cooperation program.

The vice premiers also tasked related agencies with completing talks on the price and terms of Ukrainian electricity supplies to Belarus, also a former Soviet republic run by President Alexander Lukashenko, dubbed Europe's last dictator, to be launched in 2006.

"Belarus is confirming its plans to buy up to 2.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electric power from Ukraine starting from 2006," Semashko said. The ministries are close to reaching an agreement on the price, the terms and signing a relevant contract for next year, he said. // RIA "Novosti"

Source:

http://economie.moldova.org/stiri/eng/6501/