Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 31
By Kamila Aliyeva – Trend:
To date all the documents on the establishment of the joint trading house of Uzbekistan’s specialized foreign trade company Uztrade JSC and Latvia’s De Fonte Group have been signed,Alvis Bukovskis, a financial director at De Fonte Group, told Trend.
“These are the constituent documents submitted for registration in Latvia. In fact, the house has already been created on paper. Now, the planning for the investment portfolio begins, that is, negotiations on the amount of additional investments needed for the development of the trading house in order to start working from this year,” he said.
Bukovskis noted that his company’s philosophy implies that joint cooperation is based on imports and exports in equal quantities from both sides.
“We want to develop cooperation with Uztrade. There are several projects in Uzbekistan, not to mention the huge projects inside Latvia involving import and export operations as well as the supply of equipment to Uzbekistan,” he said.
Bukovskis explained that his company can help Uzbekistan to enter the European Union market as it knows what kind of quality standard should entrepreneurs in Uzbekistan reach in order to achieve this goal.
“This is a common difficult work, but we see the prospects,” he added.
He didn't specify concrete data on the export growth, but noted that after the opening of the trading house the goods worth millions will be delivered to Latvia and EU.
“Even now the deals are being concluded but it's easier for our entrepreneurs to work with the Uzbek partners directly. The quality assurance will be carried out through the Uztrade company operating under the Ministry of Foreign Trade and which is able to give guarantees,” Bukovskis said.
European market has everything and therefore in order to replace some other suppliers, the quality of the product is needed, he noted.
An agreement to open a joint trading house of Latvia’s De Fonte Group and Uztrade JSC was reached after a meeting of the Latvian-Uzbek Intergovernmental Commission for Economic, Industrial, Scientific and Technical Cooperation and a business forum held in Riga August 28-30.
The Latvian company De Fonte Group was founded in 2008. It has 8 enterprises in such industries as textiles, engineering and information technology.
In addition, a business center founded by this company operates in Tashkent, which advises entrepreneurs on business development issues in Uzbekistan and European countries.
The company has opened two enterprises for the production of electric cartings, bicycles, scooters and quadrocycles in Uzbekistan. The company also plans to open garment factory and sell production goods to European countries.