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Russian-Brazilian intergovernmental commission discusses stronger trade

BRASILIA, December 10. /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian-Brazilian intergovernmental commission on trade, economic, scientific and technical cooperation is discussing how to fully tap the potential of bilateral relations for them to correspond to the status of strategic partnership.

The commission’s meeting opened in Brasilia on Monday.

Delegates said the two countries’ relations had been given a tangible impetus after Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Brazil in February and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s visit to Russia last December.

The Russian-Brazilian high-level meeting is expected to take place in the first half of 2014, when Brazil will take over presidency of BRICS, an association of five major emerging economies - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

“It is very important that such science-intensive and high-tech areas as space, nuclear power and biotechnologies play even more important role in Russian-Brazilian cooperation,” the deputy head of the Russian Economic Development Ministry’s Europe and America department, Galina Kurochkina, told Itar-Tass.

“This year has become a breakthrough in Brazil for Russian companies specializing in information technologies,” she said, stressing importance “of keeping and increasing the potential of bilateral trade that had reached $4.5 billion over the past ten months.”

The Russian export to the South American country totalled $1.7 billion. The statistics proves importance of Russia’s trade with Brazil. It shows that Brazil accounts for 57% of cane raw sugar on the Russian market, 55% of cattle meat, 22% of pork, 18 percent of poultry meat and 15% of coffee beans.

The commission’s special group also discusses the two countries’ military-technical cooperation that has been successfully developing of late. For instance, this concerns the export of Russian helicopters and air defense systems to Brazil.