ASHGABAT, September 17 (Itar-Tass) - Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow on Tuesday discussed the prospects for his country’s cooperation with Russia at the talks with the co-chairman of the intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, the press service of the Turkmenistani government said.
“Turkmenistan attaches significance to the consolidation and development of traditional friendly relations with Russia,” Berdimuhammedow said.
He called attention to the “high level of interstate Turkmenistani-Russian dialog.”
Berdimuhammedow and Dvorkovich discussed a growth of bilateral trade, including a growth of the imports of Russian high-tech machinery and equipment. As the areas holding much promise for cooperation, they singled out transport and telecommunications.
“The sides considered a broad spectrum of economic partnership programmes, as this partnership is developing quite dynamically in the production of natural resources and, on top of that, in mechanical engineering and telecommunications,” Dvorkovich said.
Upon the end of the bilateral commission’s session, the sides signed an agreement on cooperation in maritime transport and a treaty on science and research cooperation between the Seismic Surveying Institute of the Turkmenistani Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The commission was founded in February 2003. It will have its next session in 2014.
In 2012, Russian-Turkmenistani trade turnover totaled $ 1.4 billion. The figure for January-June 2013 was $ 7121.5 million.