Kazakhstan, Astana, October 4 / Trend, D. Mukhtarov /
"Kazakhstan is the third largest trading partner of Belarus among CIS countries after Ukraine and Russia," Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev said on Friday during negotiations with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko.
The Belarusian president is on a two-day official visit to Astana.
"Already some 14 joint enterprises operate in Kazakhstan, pit mine machinery, tractors, combine harvesters, engines, elevators, special municipal fire equipment are assembled - we didn't have this," Nursultan Nazarbayev said.
According to the president, despite the increase in commodity turnover in 2012, a decline is observed this year.
"This is due to the situation in the world economy as a whole. But the positive experience of cooperation in the field of industrial cooperation continues. Yesterday and today we had enough discussions in narrow format about the interaction of our countries. The first issue is the dynamic development of trade and economic cooperation," Nazarbayev stressed.
According to him, a joint statement about strengthening the economic and political cooperation will be signed.
It should be stressed that, according to the Statistics Agency of Kazakhstan, the volume of trade turnover between the republics amounted to $766.2 million in 2012, which is by 5.4 per cent more than in 2011.