The Speaker noted that Belarus is interested in expanding cultural, economic and trade links with India and proposed to develop a political roadmap which will serve as a long-term plan for bilateral relations between the two countries. “The comprehensive plan, which was adopted earlier, actually ends in 2015. We can now discuss the medium-and long-term development of economic and trade links between our countries,” said Mr. Myasnikovich.
In his view, the roadmap should reflect the following key areas: political contacts, visits, mutual support at an international level and parliamentary contacts. He reminded the council that previous work on a free trade agreement between the Eurasian Economic Union and India is also relevant. This was initiated a year ago at the Eurasian Economic Commission. He expressed his wish to review relations between our two countries and discuss the bottlenecks that are currently hindering the development of bilateral trade and economic interaction. He suggested that, as traditional forms of interaction have been somewhat exhausted, a discussion of mutual preferences aimed at activating trade would be a valuable next step.
By Yekaterina Markova