Belarussian President called on Russian oil companies to help Belarus by providing fuel for the harvesting campaign

Alexander Lukashenko turned to major Russian oil companies operating in Belarus with a request to help the country's agricultural sector by providing fuel for the harvesting campaign.

The Belarussian president said about this during an intercom conference in Minsk.

As he pointed out, the Belarussian leadership which used to create favourable conditions for Russian oil companies' work on the Belarussian market, will help them to attain priority rights of work on the republic's market.

When reporting to the Belarussian president about the progress of their harvesting campaign, Mikhail Rusy, the republic's agriculture minister, said that by now Belarus harvested 2,626,000 tons of grain crops, with an average yield of 27.3 centners per hectare. In Rusy's words, by the end of the first week of the harvesting campaign grain crops were gathered on 43 percent of all sown areas. According to specialists' forecasts, Belarus has a real chance to gather 5.9 million tons of cleaned grain this year, which will fully meet the republic's grain requirements.

Lukashenko pointed out that in the present difficult weather conditions the harvesting campaign was carried out in an emergency regime: the country's entire agricultural complex was working round-the-clock. The president's envoys vested with vast powers were sent to every region of the republic. As it was in previous years, the Belarussian countryside will receive 50,000 tons of diesel fuel and 10,000 tons of petrol from the republic's state reserve.