On March 19, 2015, in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, a meeting of the Business Council of the Nizhny Novgorod Region of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus took place. Nizhny Novgorod Governor Valery Shantsev, Head of External Relations of the Government of the Nizhny Novgorod region, Irina Negrebetskaya, and chief of the Department of the Embassy of the Republic of Belarus in the Russian Federation in Nizhny Novgorod, Sergei Khizov, took part in the meeting.
During the meeting, participants discussed preparations for the visit of the delegation of the Nizhny Novgorod region to Minsk to take part in the 13th meeting of the Business Cooperation Council of the Nizhny Novgorod region and the Republic of Belarus.
According to Irina Negrebetskaya, the meeting discussed presumably organizational issues. "According to our estimates, the format of the business cooperation council is the most successful one for interaction. Problems of different spectrum can be solved, and, as we see, the Council primarily works between sessions, when companies and power agencies cooperate to solve various problems," she said.
"A number of projects have been outlined for the five-year program of cooperation. First and foremost, it goes about interaction in the industrial field. This project includes GAZ Group, as well as major counter-parties of the group - the Leninsky Engine Plant. There are many other issues of mutual deliveries, including exports of Belarusian agricultural equipment," said Sergei Khizov.
As a result of 2014, the Republic of Belarus was ranked third among 143 countries that act as foreign trade partners of the Nizhny Novgorod region. The volume of commodity turnover amounted to 581.3 million dollars.
Earlier, it was reported that Nizhny Novgorod Governor Valery Shantsev met with Secretary of State of the Unified State of Russia and Belarus Grigory Rapota on May 6, 2014 in the Kremlin. During the meeting, the officials discussed prospects of business cooperation between Belarus and the Nizhny Novgorod region.
Grigory Rapota said that companies of the Nizhny Novgorod region were already members of joint Russian-Belarusian programs. "One can learn a lot from the Nizhny Novgorod region in terms of trade and economic relations. The mechanism that works in the Nizhny Novgorod region, clearly works on both the administrative level and on the level of individual companies. For example, the center of engineering construction of a nuclear power plant, which is now being carried out in Belarus, is located in the Nizhny Novgorod region. This is not just the largest of bilateral projects, but also Russia's largest project abroad," he said.
Pravda.Ru