Meeting with Chairman of Senate of Pakistan Mian Raza Rabbani

Belarus and Pakistan have real opportunities for raising the bilateral trade to $1 billion by 2020, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko said as he met with Chairman of the Senate of Pakistan Mian Raza Rabbani on 2 February.

The head of state noted that Belarus has established good, friendly relations with the Pakistani leadership - the president and the prime minister. The countries are considering ways to step up cooperation in all fields.

“I know that parliaments play a big role in the two countries, and I would like to ask you to monitor Pakistan’s effort to implement the roadmap that we developed for our short- and medium-term cooperation,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said. “We have enough cooperation potential and real opportunities for this. We can even exceed this target. We cannot just make declarations. We should work to achieve this target by mapping out specific cooperation areas and establishing amounts of goods that we can sell to each other.”

The head of state added that there are no closed topics in the cooperation between Belarus and Pakistan. The countries can cooperate in all areas. The President expressed hope that MPs of the two countries who are responsible for this cooperation will step up their efforts.

Mian Raza Rabbani, in turn, said that Belarus has posted excellent results in many fields. He is convinced that the relations and cooperation between Belarus and Pakistan will be increasingly vibrant in the future. Within a rather short period of time Belarus and Pakistan have managed to create a legal framework for cooperation which comprises more than 70 agreements in various fields, including in the economy.

The meeting focused on the expansion of the legal framework of interaction, the enhancement of trade and economic ties, including in the establishment of assembly plants. The sides reaffirmed the need to switch from rhetoric to concrete actions to implement existing agreements.