Kazakh companies will be active in the privatization of large industrial assets in Belarus, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said after the Tuesday meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko.

He described the meeting as frank and said they “looked into the future”, in particular, discussed the possibility of the participation of Kazakh companies in the privatization of large industrial assets in Belarus. “We are interested in machine building, chemical industry, oil refinery and agriculture,” Nazarbayev said.

In his opinion, the active involvement of Kazakh companies in the Belarusian privatization program “will build up confidence, increase mutual investments and promote prosperity of both states.”

Meanwhile, Lukashenko said that Belarus was ready to join Kazakhstan’s industrialization program.

“Kazakhstan is transforming rapidly, and this positive dynamics cannot be overlooked,” Lukashenko said, expressing the wish “to join the grandiose plans of the republic.”

“We would like Kazakhstan to use everything amassed in the Soviet period and everything we have managed to preserve and develop. We are ready for cooperation with Kazakhstan and for joint production projects. We are very interested in working in Kazakhstan,” he said.

“The two economies are mutually supplementary, which is the foundation of the bilateral cooperation,” Lukashenko said.

Belarus and Kazakhstan are no rivals: “everything we make Kazakhstan needs, and everything Kazakhstan makes we need,” Lukashenko said.

There are about 30 joint projects, and many of them worth of over $100 million are being implemented, he said.

Kazakhstan is the third biggest partner of Belarus, after Russia and Ukraine, he said. “Our trade will top $1 billion this year. This is just the beginning,” he said.

The interaction of Kazakhstan and Belarus in the innovative industrial program, whose first five-year phase is underway in Kazakhstan, will bring the bilateral relations “to a totally different level,” Nazarbayev said.

ITAR-TASS