TOKYO, June 03. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia assesses positively the development of economic ties with Japan, said State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, who is currently on a working visit in Tokyo.
“We assess positively our economic contacts. The trade is growing from year to year, and we have reached a quite large figure of about $35 billion in the previous year,” Naryshkin said, noting that representatives of Japanese political and business circles showed a keen interest in developing the cooperation with Russia.
“We met here with representatives of major companies that operate successfully in machine-building, healthcare, biotechnologies and urban economy,” the State Duma speaker said, noting that “a large number of joint projects are in our common portfolio.”
Naryshkin named development of Russian regions in the Far East and Siberia among guidelines of cooperation. “Japanese companies can and will surely participate on the broadest scale in these major and ambitious projects,” the speaker noted.
Naryshkin headed the State Duma delegation at an opening ceremony of the Festival of Russian Culture in Japan, which was held at Tokyo Imperial Hotel on Monday. During the two-day visit Russian lawmakers met counterparts from Japanese parliament. Negotiators held consultations on parliamentary cooperation and a broad range of interstate relations.
Parliamentary ties were discussed at a meeting between Naryshkin and Speaker of the upper house of Japanese parliament Masaaki Yamazaki in the Japanese capital on Tuesday. The meeting was held at the country’s supreme legislature, the parliamentary press service said.
At the meeting, Naryshkin called for more intensive ties between lawmakers naming them an “important part of Russian-Japanese political talks".
The State Duma speaker also had a meeting with Vice-President of the ruling Japanese Liberal Democratic Party Masahiko Komura on Tuesday.