President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow had a phone talk on 27 December. The two presidents congratulated each other on the forthcoming New Year and discussed several matters relating to bilateral cooperation, the press service of the Belarusian head of state told BelTA.

Among other things the two heads of state talked about the construction of an ore mining and processing enterprise at the Garlykskoye deposit of potash salts, sales of Belarusian machines to Turkmenistan, implementation of civil engineering projects, cooperation in education and personnel training. Close attention was paid to ways to step up the bilateral trade. It was mentioned that in 2011 Belarus-Turkmenistan trade grew by more than 200% in comparison with 2010.

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow also said that the Belarusian side would get more opportunities to implement various promising projects in Turkmenistan. Among the projects is the construction of new factories, housing communities, bridges and other infrastructure objects.

It was noted that in 2011 the heads of state stayed in touch quite a lot at multilateral and bilateral meetings. The conversation that took place on 27 December was held in a warm friendly manner that characterizes the general state of the bilateral relations.