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WTO dissolution not on agenda, Economic Development Minister says

The issue of dissolving the WTO was not discussed at the official level and claims concerned the Doha Round
Photo ITAR-TASS/Alexander Astafyev
Photo ITAR-TASS/Alexander Astafyev

DENPASAR, Bali, October 7 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev said on Monday the issue of dissolving the World Trade Organization was not on the agenda.

“Such issue is not on the agenda,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bali. “Undoubtedly, the World Trade Organization has a big future.”

“The thing is that within the Doha Round the time- and effort-taking work on further measures to implement agreements on trade and tariff reduction is underway. And here really everybody expects that within the framework of the 9th Ministerial Conference some serious movements should be made,” Ulyukayev said, adding that the 9th WTO Ministerial Conference would take place in Bali in December.

“It is necessary to define more specifically the tariff policy, agriculture and investments,” he said, adding that “there are some signals and movement.”

The issue of dissolving the WTO was not discussed at the official level and claims concerned “the Doha Round, which lasts for a long time and gives no results,” Ulyukayev said, supposing that a list of initiatives could be extended.

Investments - a driving force for Russia’s economic growth

Alexei Ulyukayev believes that investments will become a driving force for the Russian economy’s growth in the second half of the year.

“We hope most of all for an investment component,” he said. “In the first half of the year we had a minus, now we have a minus of 1.3%,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bali on Monday.

There were grounds to believe that in the third and fourth quarters of the year the growth of investments might reach 2.5%,” Ulyukayev said adding that such components as agriculture would also influence the economic growth.

“The economic growth of 1.8% is quite achievable by the end of the year,” he said.