BUCE may play an important role in the development of India’s trade and economic cooperation with Belarus by becoming a reliable link between Indian and Belarusian businesses.

Alok Ranjan, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of India to the Republic of Belarus, voiced this opinion during his visit to the head office of the Belarusian Universal Commodity Exchange (BUCE) on October 20, 2021.

According to the diplomat, the use of the exchange mechanism could make the structure of the mutual trade more balanced by increasing the sales of such commodities as sawn timber, ferrous metal products, and petrochemicals.

“Today potash fertilizers make up a disproportionately large share of the total trade volume between our countries. Yet there are plenty of other goods that Belarusian manufacturers could ship to India and vice versa. These include sawn timber, metal products, petrochemicals, foodstuffs, just to name a few. In this respect, BUCE is indeed a promising tool of which every Indian company should be aware if it decided to enter the market of Belarus and Eastern Europe in general”, Alok Ranjan underscored.

Alexander Osmolovski, BUCE Chairman of the Board, agreed with the necessity for launching a more robust awareness-raising campaign among the representatives of India’s business community and suggested pooling efforts with the Embassy in order to arrange joint events designed to promote exchange trade and establish business contacts between Belarusian and Indian enterprises. He also reminded that BUCE has over 3 thousand accredited members from the European Union that could be interested in buying Indian-made products.

“If we manage to set up regular trade between Belarusian and Indian companies via our electronic marketplace, then, whether we wish it or not, the EU companies will definitely start paying attention to the offers of Indian exporters. This is exactly what happened when we decided to make a foray into the Chinese market. As soon as we gained a firm foothold there and worked out the logistics, the companies from Europe got immediately involved in this process and began to use our trading platform for direct interaction with Chinese businesses. Therefore, our slogan “Join us and trade with entire world” is not an empty phrase but rather a call to action”, Alexander Osmolovski said.

The talks resulted in the agreement to organize an online Belarus-India business forum that will help Indian companies to learn more about the possibilities and advantages of exchange trade. The event is also supposed to become the starting point for long-term fruitful cooperation between BUCE and the Embassy of India.