“Flawed” Relations

The Russian side hasn’t received an new official loan request. It has been reported by a journalists by a source in the government of the Russian Federation in the run-up to the session of the Council of Ministers of the “union state”. As said by him, trade relations between countries have a rather “flawed” nature.

“There were no address of the Belarusian side concerning $2 billion, there was no mentioning of the second part of the loan,” he said.

The source noted that giving loans for Belarus is “a good and secure” investment for Russian Finance ministry. “It’s a pure financial operation for them,” he underlined.

Russia is also ready to take part in construction of a nuclear power plant in Belarus, in case the Belarusian side “would adopt a political decision” to construct such an object, a source in the Russian government said. “It’s a very interesting topic, which would allow bringing our trade and economic cooperation to a new level,” the source informed.

He added that at the moment the structure of the trade turnover of the two counties has a somewhat “flawed nature” for Russia: main volumes of import to Belarus are energy resources. “Implementation of such a large-scale project as a nuclear power station construction would allow adjusting the structure of goods exchange,” the source said.

As for the possibility to place Belarusian loan in Russian internal market, according to the source, it is possible, but “this issue is to be solved not with our government, but with our financial regulator”.

“If Belarus wants to place its financial obligations at Russian internal market, they should be secured, it mustn’t become T-bills (short-term state treasury bills) in the worse sense of the word”.

Earlier it was informed that in 2008 Russia would consider giving a new loan of $2 billion to Belarus. A vice prime minister, Russian Finance Minister Andrei Kudrin made a statement about that on December 20 summing up the results of signing the agreement between governments of Belarus and Russia on granting $1.5 billion state loan to the Belarusian side.