The neighboring country reports that bilateral trade turnover last year was 3.9 billion litas (EUR 1.13b), while Lithuania reports a yet bigger sum, 5.96 billion litas.
However, the Lithuanian statistics office is not inclined to put too much significance on these figures since Lithuania sees growth in its trade with all key partners.
“The statistical data provided by Belarus and by us cannot be absolutely identical. There are no countries with matching imports and exports statistics. The figures differ due to differences in methodologies or currency fluctuations,” Birutė Stolytė of Statistics Lithuania told the web portal.
Moreover, one country might report both exports and re-exports while another might only report the same data broken down by the country of origin, she added.
Statistics Lithuania has reported that Lithuania’s trade with Belarus last year came close to 6 billion litas with exports accounting for 3.7 billion litas and imports, for the remaining 2.3 billion litas. As estimated by the statistics office, bilateral trade with Belarus last year rose by around 8 percent from the year before.
