BEIJING, May 13 (Xinhua) -- Belarus exported 186,500 metric tons (tonnes) of dairy products to China in 2018, valuing 60.5 million U.S. dollars and up eight times year on year, reported People's Daily quoting data from Belarus.
As a big producer of dairy products, Belarus boasts an annual dairy product output of over seven million tonnes, 60 percent of which is exported.
Full-container-train freight transport brought by the Belt and Road construction has to some extent pushed up the remarkable growth of exports from Belarus to China, said Aleksei Bogdanov, head of the Central Office for Foreign Economic Activities of the Belarusian Agriculture and Food Ministry.
As an important Belt and Road node in Eurasia, Belarus had witnessed a total of 325,000 containers transported by the China-Europe freight trains passing through the country last year, accounting for 81 percent of the total containers transported via Belarus. The figure is expected to reach one million by 2025.
China-Europe freight trains have brought opportunities for Belarus to expand its exports to China by shortening transportation time and costs.
According to an official with the Ministry of Transport and Communications of Belarus, Belarus is putting efforts in developing railway infrastructure, “Belarus supports the Digital Silk Road Initiative envisioned by China and hopes to participate in the implementation of it,” said the official.
Close cooperation between related authorities of the two sides has also created favorable conditions for Belarus to expand exports to China. From 2016 to 2018, a total of 50-odd dairy product processing firms, two meat processing plants and 5 poultry farms in Belarus had won China's approval to export products to China.
Besides, multiple cooperation agreements have been signed recently between the General Administration of Customs of China and the State Customs Committee as well as the Agriculture and Food Ministry of Belarus, focusing on fields like corporate credit recognition, customs clearance for China-Europe freight trains and agricultural product quarantine. (Edited by Gu Shanshan)
A single purchase
