Belarus and Italy plan to step up investment cooperation, Prime Minister Syarhey Sidorski said at a meeting with Italian Ambassador Giulio Prigioni in Minsk on 28 September.

There is certainty that we will reach significant progress in investment projects before the end of this year," the Council of Ministers' press office quoted Sidorski as saying.

"Our dialogue is developing in all areas of cooperation and today's meeting will give an additional impetus to relations between Belarus and Italy," he noted.

The Italian diplomat, for his part, noted that the two countries had "achieved much success in humanitarian cooperation and this will become the basis for expanding cooperation in the political, economic, cultural and other areas".

He referred to Belarus's cooperation with SACE, Italy's state-owned export credit insurance company. "All Italian companies lean on the opinion of the SACE insurance group while working with foreign companies. Work is now underway to make Belarus an important direction of our investment," Prigioni said.

In 2008, Italy was Belarus's eight-largest trading partner among non-CIS countries as bilateral trade rose by 45 per cent to 1.2bn dollars. Belarus's exports soared by 73.8 per cent to 320m dollars and imports increased by 36.7 per cent to 872.4m dollars.

In the first seven months of this year, Belarus's exports dropped by 57 per cent to 86.6m dollars, while imports went down by 12.7 per cent to 403.9m dollars.

Belarus attracted 3.3m dollars in Italian direct investment in 2008 and 1m dollars in the first half of this year.

Source: Belapan news agency, Minsk, in English 0831 gmt 29 Sep 09

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