BUENOS AIRES, March 23. /TASS/. Russia annually contributes over $1 billion to international cooperation, including in providing assistance to developing countries, Russian Ambassador to Argentina Dmitry Feoktistov told reporters after the Second High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation held in Buenos Aires on March 20-22.
"We have been donors for international cooperation for a while now, since 2009," Feoktistov said. "Now our contribution to cooperation stands at over $1 billion per year. To be more precise, it is at $1.1 billion. Moreover, it grows by several percent, sometimes even several dozen percent, every year," he noted.
"Of course, the money is sent to those regions that we find the most important," the diplomat added. He said he is talking about the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. "Around 60% go in bilateral contacts, 40% are distributed multilaterally, with the UN, World Bank and IMF [International Monetary Fund]," he said.
"Russia is ready to boost cooperation with other countries both in the South-South framework and in the format of trilateral cooperation in the framework of facilitating international development and achieving goals of Agenda 2030 and Sustainable Development Goals," Feoktistov concluded.