Ilham Aliyev's official visit to Belarus over

Belarus and Azerbaijan have reached an agreement to aim for the joint merchandise export to third-country markets. Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev discussed this issue at the meeting in Minsk.

Aleksandr Lukashenko has seen off the high guest at Minsk National Airport. The two heads of state held a meeting at the airport to draw results of the two-day official visit of Ilham Aliyev to Belarus.

Belarus would like to expand commodity trade with Azerbaijan as much as possible, Aleksandr Lukashenko said. The Belarusian President noted that the 28 August talks were intensive and fruitful and generated new ideas on expanding the bilateral cooperation across many fields. The sides agreed that in Autumn the Belarusian delegation will visit Baku to discuss the initiatives put forward during the meeting in Minsk. "We need to “finalize” our plan of actions," Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

“I will be honest with you. We would like Belarusian goods to be present on the market of Azerbaijan; after all, Belarusian products have a world-class quality. In turn, we will prefer Azerbaijani goods other things being equal,” the Belarusian President said. He added: “I think it will make much sense, as we do not have any barriers in the bilateral trade”.

Ilham Aliyev, in turn, said that Azerbaijan likes the quality of Belarusian goods and wants to increase import.

The Azerbaijani leader thanked Aleksandr Lukashenko for hospitality and praised the results of the visit. "We have discussed many issues, first of all, in the bilateral agenda and see a huge potential for further development of cooperation," Ilham Aliyev said.

He believes that a lot has been done to promote bilateral ties within a short period of time. The countries raised mutual trade, forged industrial and energy cooperation.

Aleksandr Lukashenko and Ilham Aliyev have reached an agreement to aim for the joint merchandise export to third-country markets.

Aleksandr Lukashenko said: “We would like to jointly enter markets of other countries, including neighboring ones, via Azerbaijan in Caucasus where respect for the country is high. We would like to bring Belarusian, Azerbaijani, and jointly manufactured products to markets of other countries in the region. It would be a major breakthrough and will generate massive profits”.

Ilham Aliyev backed the idea. “We are interested in it because in a certain time our market will be fully satisfied by domestic manufacturers. We have set the goal of entering foreign markets. The export potential issue will be very urgent if we want to continue developing. And naturally we want it. Belarusian-Azerbaijani joint ventures will be export-oriented,” the President of Azerbaijan said.

“I welcome your decision on priority cooperation between Belarus and Azerbaijan. There are all the prerequisites for that. Together we can do a lot,” the Azerbaijani leader believes.

He underlined that export to third countries will be discussed at the next session of the Belarusian-Azerbaijani trade and economic commission that is scheduled to take place in Baku next year. Participants of the session will discuss the arrangements made in Minsk at the top level and will analyze the possibility of entering third-country markets together, remarked Ilham Aliyev.