Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31
By Fakhri Vakilov – Trend:
Uzbekistan and Russia are planning to bring mutual trade turnover up to $10 billion, Trend reports citing Uzbek media.
"The coordination mechanisms of the premier level exist with a very limited number of states, which confirms the special, privileged nature of relations between Russia and Uzbekistan. We will deal with strategic issues of cooperation in the trade and economic, industrial, energy, investment, transport, agricultural, and high-tech areas, in the field of culture and education," Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said during a meeting of the Joint Commission at the level of heads of government.
He stated that relations between the two countries are developing dynamically. Uzbekistan is one of the main trade partners of the Russian Federation. The trade turnover grew by more than 20–25 percent, reaching $4.5 billion. This is one of the highest rates with the CIS countries.
"The positive dynamics continues this year; we have increased our turnover by 10 percent. Therefore, there is an ambitious task to bring our trade to the level of $10 billion. I am sure that we will be able to achieve this number if we vigorously will do all of this,” Medvedev said.
Practical work, he noted, is conducted on the basis of the intergovernmental economic cooperation program until 2024. It covers 109 projects in various fields.
"It is also important that Russia remains a very serious partner for Uzbekistan in the sphere of investments. The total volume of investments is about $9 billion; more than 1,100 enterprises with Russian capital are operating in Uzbekistan. We intend to further develop cooperation in this sphere," Russian prime minister stressed.
He also added that the countries have a number of large strategic projects, including a project on the construction of a nuclear power plant. A number of [project cover the supply of industrial goods.
“On the eve of the visit, I held a meeting at the Supervisory Board of VEB, our development institute, and we decided to finance the supply of Russian power equipment as part of the construction of the Nizhnchatkal hydropower plant. Through VEB, we will also finance a number of other projects, including the supply of subway cars to Tashkent. We are ready to consider this approach in other areas," Medvedev underlined.
He concluded that the sides have prepared a substantial package of intergovernmental and interdepartmental documents on various issues. These documents strengthen the legal framework for cooperation and include more than 300 agreements at the moment.
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