Minsk - Ukraine views joint ventures with Belarus in agricultural engineering as promising, Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine Igor Prasolov said at a meeting with Industry Minister of Belarus Dmitry Katerinich on 12 June, BelTA has learnt.
“Belarus and Ukraine enjoy strong ties. At a time when the global economy is grappling with some problems, our countries have developed quite stable economic relations. Our country considers it important to increase the output of agricultural equipment because the agricultural market is growing and we need to increase export capabilities, which, in turn, depends on agricultural equipment,” the Minister noted. That is why the establishment of joint ventures with Belarus is important for Ukraine. “This will enable the modernization of combine harvesters, towing implements, tractors and other vehicles and equipment. Estimates vary, but Ukraine loses about 5 million tonnes of grain because of lack of farm machines. Ukraine needs to modernize about 31,000 outdated and energy-consuming tractors, which is a big number,” Igor Prasolov said. He underlined that taking into account current industrial capacities the country will not be able to produce enough farm machines.
Igor Prasolov also noted that Ukraine is interested in localization of manufactures instead of creating plants to assemble machines. “Many foreign machine-building companies come to us but we value our relations with Belarus, which is why we need to find a decision that would suit both our countries. We should get our industrialists together and quickly begin producing the machines we need,” Igor Prasolov added.
