MINSK, 28 October (BelTA) – Belarus' Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko put forth Belarus' initiatives in the CIS as he spoke at the meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of Government in Astana, BelTA has learned.
“In order to comprehensively strengthen the Commonwealth, Belarus has recently come up with a number of new proposals. Thus, last year, under the Belarusian presidency, we were able to speed up the reconciliation process of the draft free trade agreement in services, which had been negotiated for more than ten years. Taking into account the fact that the work on this document is on the home stretch, I hope that today we will be able to finalize it and sign it at the next meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of Government,” said Roman Golovchenko.
This year, in order to minimize the consequences of the sanctions, the CIS Economic Council approved a list of joint response measures at the initiative of Belarus. “This document is of exceptional importance as it seeks to prevent a slowdown in trade and economic cooperation between the Commonwealth countries. Taking this opportunity, I would like to ask my counterparts to tell the people in charge of implementing this document in your countries to approach this matter as responsibly as possible, and I would like to ask the CIS Executive Committee to continue monitoring its implementation,” the prime minister said addressing the participants of the meeting.
Another initiative of the Belarusian side is to intensify the work of the Commonwealth's sectoral councils to respond promptly to emerging economic challenges. “I believe that these structures can and should generate new proposals to expand cooperation in their fields of expertise and to develop, if necessary, crisis response measures,” the Belarusian head of government added.
In order to ensure food security, Belarus proposed to keep working on the establishment of a common agricultural market and to boost sustainable agriculture. Roman Golovchenko deems it necessary to increase self-sufficiency of the CIS states in the field of selective breeding, seed production, and plant protection.
“In addition to that, we must effectively build new or upgrade existing transport corridors. It is also necessary to take measures to further streamline customs administration, to make it faster, to introduce end-to-end digital technologies. Our goal should be smooth and unobstructed movement of goods,” the prime minister added.
