Lukashenko in favor of closer cooperation in Union State

MINSK, 15 March (BelTA) - President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko supports the idea to expand the areas and forms of cooperation in the Belarus-Russia Union State, State Secretary of the Union State Grigory Rapota told reporters after the meeting with the Belarusian head of state. According to the State Secretary, the issue of expanding the list of mechanisms to promote cooperation in the Union State was on the agenda of the meeting. In particular, there is such a well-established form of interaction as Union State programs. “This form of interaction allows us to invest the Union State funds in the development of new technologies. This form of cooperation is promising and will be further developed,” Grigory Rapota said and noted the relative complexity of the mechanism of development of such programs. “This issue is on the agenda of the Permanent Committee. We need to work on it to make the process of decision-making faster,” said the Secretary of State Another form of cooperation is different kinds of events: forums, seminars and conferences that allow involving the expert community in the process of addressing various issues in the development of the Union State. “Projects are another form of cooperation that is envisaged in all the documents but has not received adequate development yet,” the official said. “Projects are a form of cooperation able to raise private capital. They can be implemented either through private or public funds as well as within the public-private partnership,” Grigory Rapota said. “Alexander Lukashenko has supported the idea to widen cooperation including in this issue,” the State Secretary said. Grigory Rapota noted that the two countries are successfully implementing joint programs in high technologies including development of new polymer composite materials, space exploration and agriculture. “I think we will mainly focus on high technology research and design engineering. In Belarus there are several competence centers that can make a backbone for implementation of these projects. Here I mean microelectronics, petrochemistry (for example, production of viscose rayon fiber), motorcar construction, agricultural engineering and agricultural production. We will focus our attention on these areas at first,” Grigory Rapota said.

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