MINSK, 19 April (BelTA) – Over 50% of Belarus' newly produced equipment should be exported, Belarus' Vice Premier Vladimir Semashko said during a presentation of brand new municipal vehicles at OAO Minsk Automobile Plant (MAZ trademark) on 19 April, BelTA has learned.
“Belarus has an open economy. This is why we should export over 70% of GDP. Thus the country will be provided with sufficient financial resources to buy necessary raw material. This is why we set the task to export over 50% of new equipment,” the vice premier said. Thus the state will achieve its goals: to replace import and promote export. According to Vladimir Semashko, Belarusian equipment boasts such advantages as affordable price, reliability, quality and functional possibilities.
Vladimir Semashko got familiar with brand new municipal vehicles of OAO MAZ and pointed out that the presentation is aimed at utility services. The vice premier noted that they should see what kinds of modern equipment is produced by the Belarusian machine-building companies.
Vladimir Semashko spoke about the new MAZ sewer flushers trucks produced on the basis of Belarusian chassis with Denmark-made attachments. He noted that cooperation is natural in this case. Belarus does not have experience in the production of such equipment. “This is the world practice. Since we produce high-quality chassis, we search for a partner company to buy attachments,” the vice premier said. MAZ cooperates with many leading European and Chinese manufacturers of attachments in this field.
Vladimir Semashko also recalled that Zoomlion Company had started to build a factory in the China-Belarus industrial park Great Stone to make equipment for utility vehicles. The enterprise will produce a whole range of vehicles: cranes of various carrying capacity, sweeping machines, and dump trucks. There are plans to increase the share of local content in manufacturing process up to 100%. According to Vladimir Semashko, this is a natural way to branch out into a new market promptly and confidently.
The vice premier remarked that currently Belarus is recovering from the crisis and the recession that followed after it. In H1 2017 the Belarusian industry expanded by 4.3%. “This is a good figure, yet we had even better statistics before. According to the UN data, Belarus' share in global industrial production grew by 2.3 times from 0.049% up to 0.113%,” Vladimir Semashko said. He mentioned OAO MAZ as an example of an enterprise that increased the industrial output as against 2016. In 2016 the production surged by 30% in current prices, in Q1 2017 by 72%. It rose by 37% based on the physical volume index. “All these figures show that the Belarusian economy is picking up pace and we should take advantage of this. We need to return to the markets where we worked before. We need to get a foothold in them and branch out into new ones,” the vice minister added.
