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Russian-Vietnamese trade turnover exceeds $4 billion

Russia and Vietnam agree to boost trade turnover to $5 billion as soon as possible

HANOI, April 14. /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian-Vietnamese trade growth rate now exceeds thrice the world’s average indicator, Russia’s Deputy Economic Development Minister Alexei Likhachev said in an interview with ITAR-TASS on Monday.

While staying in a working visit in Hanoi, Likhachev said, “The leaders of our two countries set the task to raise Russian-Vietnamese trade turnover to $5 billion as soon as possible.”

“Upon results of 2013, we have already reached the level of $4 billion,” said Likhachev, who also co-chairs the Russian-Vietnamese Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation.

While speaking about key factors that promote stepping up bilateral trade, the deputy minister pointed to fruitful development of interaction between Moscow and Hanoi in the sphere of top-priority projects, the list of which was adopted at the intergovernmental commission’s meeting in 2013.

A high-level working group for promoting most important investment projects has been operating in the format of the intergovernmental commission for a year. “As of now, twelve projects are now being implemented and six more are at the stage of adjustment. Key spheres of such cooperation embrace the fields of power engineering, production and processing of energy resources, and mining industry both in Vietnam and in Russia with the participation of partner country’s companies,” Likhachev said.

In his words, implementation of these projects made it possible to increase considerably Russia’s investments in Vietnam. In 2013, Vietnam’s investments in Russia’s economy were estimated at about $2 billion. These were mainly investments into Russia’s oil and gas industry. Simultaneously, Russia’s investments in Vietnam reached $3.3 billion last year, thus demonstrating a 35% growth.

“We hope for further growth of mutual investments. We face rather optimistic forecasts that mutual financial flows can go up many-fold in medium terms. Overall cost of the projects, which are in the focus of our today’s talks, is about $20 billion, which is four- to five-fold bigger that we have in the present-day plan of investment cooperation development,” the Russian deputy economic development minister said.

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