MINSK, 12 February (BelTA) – Settlements in national currencies between Belarus and Russia reached 92% by the end of 2023, Ambassador of Belarus to Russia Dmitry Krutoi told ONT TV channel, BelTA has learned.
“Last year national currencies - Russian and Belarusian rubles - accounted for 92% of payments. This is a huge figure, the highest on record,” the ambassador emphasized.
Commenting on the record-high trade between Belarus and Russia last year, Dmitry Krutoi noted that Western sanctions were the driver of the increase in supplies to the Russian market. The task of diverting more than $10 billion of exports to friendly nations, in particular, the Russian Federation, has become a matter of survival of the Belarusian economy and a litmus test for its sustainability. “It’s great that this worked out. And within two years we increased our exports to the Russian market by $8.5 billion. This is quite an achievement, and it is attributed to a number of factors,” the Belarusian ambassador said.
The factors that contributed to it were successful resolution of logistics issues, including the use of Russian ports; good performance of the financial and banking sectors; implementation of a number of important investment and import-substitution projects together with Russia. “Over the course of two years, the prime minister and I travelled across Russian regions and visited all the largest enterprises that were ready to cooperate with us. We signed medium-term supply programs for components with each of them. This is probably one of the few segments of our economy that grew not by a couple of percentages, but by an order of magnitude,” said Dmitry Krutoi.
