MINSK, 28 March (BelTA) – Belarus and St Petersburg are turning “symmetrical” construction projects into practice, Belarusian Prime Minister Andrei Kobyakov said at the 10th meeting of the Belarus-St Petersburg Business Cooperation Council in St Petersburg on 28 March, BelTA has learned.
“Civil engineering is an important field of Belarus-St Petersburg cooperation,” Andrei Kobyakov noted. The sides have launched a joint project to build a Belarusian residential district in St Petersburg and a St Petersburg residential area in Minsk. The concept has been formulated already. The next step will be a contest to design apartment buildings. The residential districts will have a unique identity. They are meant to promote the cultural values of Belarus and St Petersburg.
“Another important avenue of cooperation is road construction,” the prime minister underlined. In His words, Belarusian companies have a real interest in joint road construction projects in St Petersburg. “We hope for participation in the construction of a highway between St Petersburg and Minsk, a bypass and the second transport ring around the town of Pavlovsk,” Andrei Kobyakov said.
Belarus-St Petersburg trade reached $1.672 billion in 2017, up 19.7% from 2016. Exports stood at $967.4 million (up 18.6%), imports totaled $704.9% (up 21.2%). The trade balance of Minsk enjoyed a surplus of $262.5 million. The major export items were fresh and chilled beef, cheeses and quark, butter, poultry meat and by-products, milk, condensed cream, cream powder, trucks, and sugar. The major import items were cars, engines and electric generators, liquid pumps, pipe fittings, and construction materials from ferrous metals.
In January 2018, Belarus-St Petersburg trade totaled $125.9 million, up 24.7% from the same period a year prior. Exports amounted to $79.1 million (up 21.3%), imports made up $46.8 million (up 30.9%). The trade surplus was $32.3 million.
