Lukashenka offers Russia to bargain potatoes for oil

Alyaksandr Lukashenka finds it possible to get maximum return from potatoes export.

“We should get in this situation,” Lukashenka stated on Friday during a working visit to Minsk region, Interfax reports.

“We do not conceal anything. We do not have oil or gas, every year prices for that are leveled up for us,” he noted. “You are welcome, and we are selling too, and we want to be happy with the prices considering increase of raw hydrocarbons prices and other components of production cost,” Lukashenka said.

As said by Lukashenka, it is necessary to grant aid to Russian parched regions. “We should help our friends in Russia, they are paying, they have enough gas, oil, and we are ready for exchange,” the Belarusian leader noted. He underlined that “we should sell grain in exceptional cases, combined feed and flour in limited qualities”. “The prices are still to grow, so today we should sell milk and meat,” the leader said.

He commissioned the government to make a clear agreement with Russia and Ukraine, which and how much fodder they need. So, Lukashenka continued, “we should use fodder sparingly, if prices sky-rocket, we can sell something later”.

In this connection agriculture and foodstuffs minister Mikhail Rysy informed Lukashenka that addresses from Voronezh, Ryazan regions of Russia, Tatarstan, have been received already. They want to buy fodder, combined feed, potatoes in Belarus.

“We are not going to sell gain yet,” the minister said. Besides, Rysy informed that “the issue with potatoes is serious now, Tatarstan is ready to buy up to 100,000 tons”. Besides, the minister said that offers from Pskov and St Petersburg are received.

Rysy has also reported a good yield of brewing barley. In this connection Lukashenka said that “we should store up brewing barley at maximum”. “Russians will buy brewing barley, malt. It is a good source of resupplying foreign currency, entering new markets,” the president said.

He ordered the government in the person of Ivan Bambiza “to define (export) prices in all items”. “No one would sell in the county without that,” Lukashenka underlined.