Lukashenka about Belarus' key markets: We can’t be reliant solely on Russia any more


Belarus President Aliaksandr Lukashenka set the goal of pushing sales of industrial products abroad when making personnel decisions on Monday. He drew attention to the need to diversify export once again.

 “The year is a special one, the situation is complicated. You can see how Russia has been reduced and Russia is our key market. You can see what is going on in Ukraine, one of our key markets, there is a war going on, buying is not something they think about, moreover, buying complicated products such as MAZ vehicles, BelAZ trucks, tractors,” state-run news agency BelTA quotes Lukashenka as saying. “But it does not mean that we are going to sit idly and wait for a better future to come. No! We have to do whatever we can do today in order to save our production sector and keep people employed”.

“We cannot rely on only Russia all the time, although it is a brotherly country. Because you can see that that market has crumbled and we followed suit. Yes, we used to sell 85% of the output to the Russian market, now the figure is only 40-45%. Yes, our dependence on a single market has been decreased but we have to do more than that. Then there is Ukraine. I don’t think that the state of affairs is better in Kazakhstan. This is why we have to pay any price to reach new markets. And it can be done,” Lukashenka said.

In his words, the penetration of the U.S. market by several Belarusian companies testifies to that. “All kinds of sanctions have been scrapped and we now trade with them. It means it can be done,” the Belarusian leader stressed.

“I’d like to emphasize one more time that the situation in the world is complicated, all the more so in our region. I should say that this kind of situation has never happened. And in this situation we should prove our ability,” he said.

www.belsat.eu/en, following BelTA

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