Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

Arkady Dvorkovich, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister visited Azerbaijan’s capital Baku on February 9-10. President Ilham Aliyev received Dvorkovich during his one-day visit.

During the meeting, Dvorkovich delivered the greetings of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev to the head of state.

The sides noted the successful development of relations between the two countries in various fields and stressed the importance of regular meetings of the heads of states to strengthen bilateral ties.

They also expressed satisfaction with the growing trade between two sides. They expressed confidence that the bilateral relations will further strengthen. They also discussed the issues related to the expansion of economic cooperation.

President Aliyev expressed his gratitude for the greetings of President Putin and Prime Minister Medvedev, and asked Dvorkovich to communicate his greetings to the Russian president and prime minister.

Talking to the journalists during the visit to Azerbaijan, Dvorkovich said that Azerbaijan and Russia are going to sign a plan of cooperation in investment field until 2020.

“Azerbaijan and Russia agreed to accelerate work on a number of documents,” Dvorkovich said. “All the documents are not expected to be signed during this visit, but we have in-process a few documents, for which we agreed to speed up the harmonization of technical issues to sign them in the first half of the year.”

He said that the main issues include a plan of cooperation in the investment field until 2020, the agreements on synchronization of the work of energy systems of Azerbaijan and Russia, the creation of an investment platform between the Russian Direct Investment Fund and Azerbaijan’s State Oil Fund.

“These agreements are the basis for implementing some projects in trade and investment area,” said the deputy prime minister.

Azerbaijani meat products may appear soon in Russian market, Dvorkovich further said.

Russia completes the assessment of Azerbaijani enterprises for the production of meat products. “This process is now underway. If we have any comments, we will send them to our partners. We hope that Azerbaijan meat products will appear soon in the Russian market.”

In December 2014, auditing commission member of the Customs Union’s countries inspected the quality of products in the meat and dairy plants as well as poultry farms to make sure that they are in compliance with export regulations.

If the products meet the veterinary and phytosanitary requirements, then the sides will sign a contract to export them.

After imposing the restrictions on the importation of these goods from the US, EU Member States, Canada, Australia and Norway, Russia decided to import food products from several countries including, the CIS states.

Russia takes the fourth place in the list of the Azerbaijan’s foreign trade partners. In general, over the recent years, Russia invested $628.4 million in Azerbaijan's fixed capital, as the total capital investments in the country are estimated at $1.8 billion.

The Azerbaijani investments in the Russian economy amounted to nearly $1 billion in 10 years.

The trade turnover between the two countries in 2014 stood at $1.96 billion, of which $1.3 billion accounted for the imports to Azerbaijan, while $640.3 million accounted for the exports to Russia, according Azerbaijan’s State Customs Committee.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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