OREANDA-NEWS. On 08 June 2009 was announced, that Russia keeps blocking exports of some Belarusian products, Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky said during a government meeting.

He said CIS premiers had agreed on May 22 to lift artificial barriers to commodity flows within the CIS.

“During the chaos that we observed in November and December there were many hasty decisions, but now that nearly all CIS countries have reported certain stabilization, we need to abolish the decisions that were taken without thorough analysis. The 12 premiers were discussing unwanted barriers to trade for 3.5 hours, and Belarus appeared to be the only country that did not put any obstacles to imports from its CIS partners,” Sidorsky said.

He called on government members to resume contacts with traditional buyers of Belarusian products.

“You all need to go and see what barriers to our supplies they have imposed and discuss ways out. Not like the agriculture minister of Russia, who said they assemble 11,000 tractors annually using Belarusian kits. But she forgot the Russian program requires 48,000 tractors, and we have to help them remember. The markets are closed to our products, and we have to discuss problems locally, but our producers are sitting on the fence,” Sidorsky said.

He said he would keep an eye on each minister’s efforts to promote Belarusian goods on foreign markets.