Uzbekistan, Tashkent, July 3 / corr Trend D.Azizov /
Tashkent hosted a next meeting of the Uzbek-French intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation and business forum of business circles of Uzbekistan and France.
Eler Ganiyev, co-chair of the commission, vice premier, minister for foreign economic relations of Uzbekistan, progress of Uzbek-French trade and economic relations.
Legislative base for developing mutual relations include the bilateral agreement on avoiding double taxation on income and preventing avoidance from tax for income and capital, enhancing and mutual protection of investments, on cooperation in the fields of economy, science, culture, air transport.
Favorable mode has been applied in the trade relations. The volume of mutual goods turnover made up $189.6 billion in 2009, 15 joint venture were established in Uzbekistan with participation of French investors and representations of 15 French companies function in the country.
The forum focused on further increase of mutual goods turnover, number of joint ventures and types of products, consolidation of relations between the banking and financial institutes in the field of development of small and medium-scale business.
The French businessmen were informed about priority directions of attracting investments in Uzbek economy. In particular, Uzbekistan is interested in attracting foreign investments to oil and gas sector, chemical industry, agriculture and water economy, automobile building, tourism, pharmaceutics, production of construction materials and food industry.
According to Ann Mari Idrak, co-chair of the commission, state secretary for foreign trade of France, France attaches great importance to expanding the cooperation with Uzbekistan, which possesses high potential in many spheres, for instance tourism and mining industry.
"We are interested in establishing and expanding long-term partner relations in this direction. We hope the cooperation between entrepreneurs of Uzbekistan and France will yield excellent results," Idrak stressed.