Petrishenko: Belarus and Azerbaijan need to maintain the pace of development of trade and economic cooperation

January 21, MINSK. Belarus and Azerbaijan need to maintain the pace of development of trade and economic cooperation. This was stated by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Petrishenko at a meeting with Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Azerbaijan to Belarus Ulvi Bakhshaliyev, BelTA has learned.

"The visit of the President of Belarus to Azerbaijan in April 2021 gave a powerful impetus to our joint work. Despite certain restrictions related to the pandemic, cooperation is developing in all areas. The level of trade for 11 months of 2021 approached $800 million. This is a very solid figure. almost doubled compared to the same period in 2020. it is important for us to maintain the pace of our trade and economic cooperation,” said Igor Petrishenko.

“In addition, we agreed that our design institutes would work in detail on the restoration of infrastructure, on the topic of agro-towns. The development of cooperation in the field of agriculture is also relevant, our agricultural departments are actively interacting, specific plans and approaches have been outlined for interaction in the field of animal husbandry, dairy processing, crop production," the Deputy Prime Minister noted.

Inter-MFA and inter-parliamentary cooperation, interaction in the sphere of culture, science, education, and tourism are developing. "We are getting ready to implement the initiative of the President of Azerbaijan in terms of holding a youth forum. It is scheduled for February this year, we plan to send a delegation of more than 20 people to exchange approaches and intensify our interaction. The plans include the Days of Culture of Belarus in Azerbaijan, and then response events in Belarus. We hope that the pre-pandemic level of cooperation in the field of tourism will be restored and people from Azerbaijan will come to us, including to sanatoriums and resorts. We have organized rehabilitation after covid-19," Igor Petrishenko noted.

Photo by Nikolai Petrov