Makhachkala, April 25, 2014. On April 24, after signing an agreement on cooperation in trade, economic, scientific, technical, and cultural development of integration processes between the Union State’s Standing Committee and Daghestan government, Union State Secretary Grigory Rapota answered questions of reporters from "Russian Newspaper", "Interfax", "RIA Novosti" and the "Union State" magazine.

He said that Belarus is interested in prospects for Russia-Belarus relations development at the regional level including Daghestan.

"Daghestan has a space for our interaction. It has import and export potential, which is quite critical. We’ll create a working group to implement the negotiated issues. At first, we’ll consider the possibility of cooperation in supplying agricultural equipment from Belarus that largely produces it. However, Daghestan is in need of organizing agricultural processing. Also, we envisage cooperation in energy and information technologies," - G. Rapota said.

Answering journalists' questions about what Daghestan can possibly import to Belarus, he noted its high agricultural potential not only in terms of producing fruits and vegetables, but also their processing; it is more efficient in terms of profitability, and it allows providing employment, too.

Grigory Rapota also stressed that it has been the first agreement the Union State’s Standing Committee has signed with a Russian region today.