The Chinese president visits Minsk

Xi Jinping, the President of the People’s Republic of China, visited Belarus between 10 and 12 May. A friendship and co-operation agreement were signed during this visit, along with a number of other bilateral agreements, contracts and loan agreements worth a total of around US$3.5 billion (according to information from the Belarusian Ministry of Finance).

A significant part of the agreements signed are merely preliminary in nature and concern, for example, the development of Belarus’s railway infrastructure, a five-year memorandum on the purchase of Belarusian potassium fertilisers by China, the construction of a car factory and a Belarusian-Chinese industrial park (this project was initiated in 2010 but is still in the initial phase).