ISLAMABAD : To promote trade and industrial cooperation Pakistan and Belarus have decided to further the already agreed plan for the local assembling of Belarus tractors through joint ventures.
The 5th Session of Pakistan-Belarus Joint Working Group on industrial cooperation held here in the Engineering Development Board (EDB) noted that the local companies were interested for JVs with their counter parts in Belarus mainly over auto and heavy machinery sector.
The meeting focused on possibilities to enhance industrial cooperation for assembling and manufacturing of Belarus tractors, 12 to 18 meter electric buses, agricultural machineries and oil transformers.
While the other areas of cooperation includes coal mining machineries, gold and silver mining machineries, concrete production machineries and iron ore extraction machineries to Pakistan.
The EDB is an attached department of Ministry of Industries and Production, and the Belarus officials were informed about the potential of industrial engineering goods available in Pakistan for Belarus.
The 5th session was co-chaired by Muhammad Asad Islam Mahni, additional secretary, Ministry of Industries and Andrey Kuznetsov, Deputy Minister of the Republic of Belarus.
It was also decided that the high level delegation from Pakistan will visit Belarus next month to determine the possibilities of increasing exports from Pakistan which includes textiles, rice, citrus fruits, leather apparel, leather footwear and medical instruments.
While it has been acknowledged that value addition of rice and citrus in Pakistan will enhance the value of exports to Belarus, and adding modern technology to the farm sector of Pakistan will support the value addition drive.
Whereas the cooperation between the business communities of both the countries will help the agriculture sector of Pakistan to benefit from the highly developed research works in this sector in Belarus.
Meanwhile, the Minsk Tractor Plant (MTZ) has an agreement to supply 2,700 Belarus tractors, to Pakistan in 2025. This agreement was formalised during Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s visit to Pakistan in December 2024.
The meeting also discussed the current status of assembling these tractors in Pakistan.
These tractors are used mostly for haulage purpose for loading sugarcane, fertilizers bags etc. and also for heavy implements usage in the field mainly in hard soil areas.
The 6th Session of Pakistan-Belarus Joint Working Group on industrial cooperation is scheduled for November 2025 and the Group is also considering sale of heavy duty BelAZ heavy duty trucks mainly in mining and quarry sectors of Pakistan. BelAZ is the producer of largest trucks in the world.