OREANDA-NEWS. On 04 May 2009 was announced, that Russia plans to include Belarusian companies in the list of enterprises that enjoy state support and apply a number of price preferences to Belarusian bidders for procurement contracts in Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, the economic development and trade minister of Russia, said during her meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Nabiullina referred to the instruction to introduce a 15% price preference for Russian producers presenting their bids. “We are amending this instruction and will apply preferences to Belarusian companies, especially those working in close cooperation with Russian makers, which supply components to Belarusian assemblies,” she said.

“We also managed to agree the list of companies that could be considered contenders for state support – these are the companies involved in production cooperation schemes,” the minister said.

“We are now working on building up lease mechanisms, which is crucial for our countries. We have agreed with the Belarusian side that we will be working on a par basis,” Nabiullina said.

Nabiullina said Belarus had become Russia’s most important trade partner in the CIS [earlier, Ukraine ranked first, and Belarus was the second-largest partner]. “Globally, Belarus has progressed to rank six, although we have observed a fall in mutual trade turnover,” she said.