OREANDA-NEWS. March 4, 2010. Belarus and Russia saw mutual trade decrease 31.2% on the year in 2009 to U.S. USD 23.4 billion, Russian Trade Representative in Belarus Alexei Kiselev told a business forum in Minsk.

“We are concerned, but we hope the business community will interfere to improve the situation,” he said.

Russia had an almost USD 10 billion surplus in mutual trade, some USD 3.3 billion over Belarusian exports to Russia, however, without energy supplies, mutual trade reached USD 12.2 billion last year, with a USD 1.1 billion surplus for Belarus in 2009, up from USD 862 million in 2008.

Russian oil supplies to Belarus reached USD 7.1 billion last year, down 25.6%, and natural gas supplies were at USD 2.6 billion, down 2.8%.

Russian investments in Belarus totaled USD 6.1 billion last year, making up a serious part of overall investment inflows, which totaled USD 9.3 billion.

Kiselev believes Russian business should redouble its efforts to enter the Belarusian market.