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President Lukashenko urges more action on Chinese investment projects

25 June 2010

MINSK, 25 June (BelTA) – In a session on cooperation with the People’s Republic of China on 25 June, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko urged to speed up the implementation of Chinese investment projects, BelTA has learnt.

According to the head of state, cooperation with China and those new foreign economic areas that have been recently outlined, including contacts in Caribbean, Middle East and Africa, “are not just of strategic significance. This is the issue of our survival as a sovereign and independent state”.

We settle this problem, our generation and the next one will be able to live decently. We fail to do it, then we will tumble and will get kicked as is the case now. That is why I require that all government officials and people involved in this work should step effort in this direction, the Belarusian leader said.

“If someone cannot or does not want to do it, tell me straight. I will tolerate neither sabotage nor idleness,” he added.

Alexander Lukashenko reiterated that the cooperation with China is strategic. All necessary conditions have been set up at the highest level in order to step up cooperation both in the political and economic areas. At the end of the year the sides concluded the agreements that the government and banks of China would open preferential credit lines to Belarus to the total sum of $15 billion for investment projects. This sum is twice as big as the aggregate foreign investments in Belarus’ economy in 2009, 4.5 times as much as the IMF loans and 10 times above the Russian loan provided by the brotherly Russia, Alexander Lukashenko said.

“In a word, Belarus and China have created unique opportunities to intensify bilateral credit and investment links. We have got a chance to use China’s resources to modernize the national economy. And to miss such opportunity would be inadmissible, I would even say, it would be a crime,” Alexander Lukashenko said. The funds should be channeled exclusively into the modernization of the Belarusian economy, making it more competitive. We need to create such manufactures which would allow us to work using the raw materials and resources exclusively at the world prices “sparing us the need to kneel every time begging for some preferences, before Russia including,” Alexander Lukashenko said.

During the session the President will be updated on the progress in the implementation of his instructions to promote cooperation with the People’s Republic of China. The President is also set to look into the reasons why the development of bilateral projects has been slow and what projects the government is going to carry out first thing. “I have warned the government and the chairman of the Belarusian-Chinese commission for trade and economic cooperation, Belarusian Ambassador to China that slow progress on the development of relations with China would cost them dear,” the head of state said.