MINSK, 7 February (BelTA) – The export of companies run by the State Military Industrial Committee of Belarus exceeded $1 billion in 2018. The committee intends to keep up the good work in 2019, too, BelTA learned from the committee's Chairman Roman Golovchenko on 7 February.
The official said: “We intend to add a bit in 2019, too. It is difficult to add something to such a figure. But we should be able to add a couple of percent according to our estimates.”
Roman Golovchenko went on saying that the State Military Industrial Committee of Belarus had managed to diversify export in accordance with the 30-30-30 scheme. The main markets are Russia and other CIS states, Africa, and Asia. “The proportional distribution gives us a certain safety margin if one of the market segments underperforms,” the official explained.
“We did rather well across the board: state defense contracts and financial performance of the companies,” added Roman Golovchenko. “As part of the state defense contracts we delivered to the army, repaired, and upgraded over 780 weapon systems and military hardware units. It is quite a large figure. R&D work has been done for a number of products. Their acceptance procedure will begin this year.” The Belarusian army received unmanned aerial vehicles, radio stations and radio relay stations, armored vehicles.
Asked about cooperation with Russia, Roman Golovchenko described it as constructive and fruitful. “We trade a lot of military products with each other. According to preliminary estimates, something along the lines of $600 million in 2018. Belarus' export to Russia exceeds Russia's export to Belarus. A very large number of companies – about 300 – rely on manufacturing cooperation schemes,” he said.
