Alexey Ostrovskiy had a meeting with the State Secretary of the Union State Grigory Rapota

On Saturday, January 25, Governor Alexey Ostrovskiy held a working meeting with the State Secretary of the Union State Grigory Rapota. The Head of the region focused on the issues relating to a number of Smolensk companies experiencing difficulties in collaboration with the industrial structures of the republic of Belarus and asked the State Secretary for assistance in resolving the disputes. Grigory Rapota said that on his part he would do his best and promised to facilitate settling the problematic issues raised by the Governor on different various levels of the Belarusian authorities.

One of such issues is the work of the Belarusian-Russian company JSC "Smolspetsteh " (since 2012 – JSC "Agro-Industrial Company"), which performs the licensed assembly of tractors carrying the brand "Belarus", as well as high quality road-building and utility machines on the their base. The company was founded in 2009 in Smolensk. Since then it showed positive growth in production volumes every year: about 2800 units were produced a year. However, in 2012 and 2013 there was a sharp drop in production (to 77 units per year) associated with the fact that RUP "Minsk Tractor Plant" began to work with JSC "Agro-Industrial Company" on the prepayment basis. At the same time, other manufacturers of "Belarus" tractors located on the territory of Russia have from 15 to 240 days of delay in payment for the tractor sets. In addition, the buyers of tractors in Russia are ready to buy them only with delay in payment. All this puts the "Agro-Industrial Company" in severe financial conditions.

Alexey Ostrovskiy asked Grigory Rapota to facilitate the consideration by the Government of the Republic of Belarus of the possibility of supplying the necessary number of tractor sets (50 sets per month) in the first quarter of 2014 by the Minsk Tractor Plant to "Agro-Industrial Company" on the basis of delayed payment of 30 working days from the date of shipment. The Head of the region noted that the company is ready to provide its assets in the form of land, production facilities and equipment as a guarantee.

The meeting also discussed providing assistance in resolving disputes between "Safonovsky electro-machine building plant", a member of the Russian electro-technical concern "Ruselprom" and the Belarusian JSC "BELAZ". The companies have had a long and fruitful cooperation on design, manufacture and supply of electrical products, but since the second half of 2013 the Belarusian partners haven’t been paying for the shipped products on time. As of January 20, 2014, the arrears amounted to 37.1 million rubles, which does not allow the plant to ship the produced generators. The stock of products for JSC «BELAZ» today is estimated at 29.7 million rubles.

In addition, the meeting discussed the cooperation between the Belarusian companies and JSC "Smolensk auto-aggregate plant named after V.P. Otrohova OMO ZIL". Alexey Ostrovskiy thanked Grigory Rapota for his assistance in solving the problem of paying the greater part of the debt of the Belarusian manufacturers to the Smolensk plant. Though, he noted, there is still a number of problems in the relationship between the automobile industries of the countries. For instance, the import substitution program implemented in Belarus has led to significant reduction in the supply volume of fasteners and transmission assemblies produced at the Smolensk and Roslavl auto-aggregate plants. In this regard, the Head of the region asked the State Secretary of the Union State to assist in stabilizing the supply of products and further development of cooperation between the Belarus and Smolensk companies.