MOSCOW, September 14. /TASS/. Russia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have adopted a roadmap for trade and investment cooperation spanning a five-year period, the Russian ministry of economic development said on Tuesday.
"The pandemic has demonstrated that we can overcome the crisis only by means of scaling up cooperation in three key areas - trade and investment, digital economy, and sustainable development. Thus, investments in joint projects increased by 3.5 times in 2020 on 2019 and reached 8.8 billion US dollars," the ministry’s press service cited Deputy Minister Vladimir Ilyichev, who represented the Russian side at a ministerial meeting, as saying.
He also called for modernizing the countries’ economic models to ensure more efficient cooperation between Russia and the ASEAN nations. He pointed to the potential of Russia-ASEAN cooperation on the climate change agenda, in particular, as part of the implementation of joint climate-related projects under the roadmap.
Other topics of the meeting included cooperation between the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and ASEAN. "The sides agreed to draft a number of initiatives in the areas of the development of the single-window systems, e-trade, intellectual property protection, as well as the use of sanitary and phytosanitary measures," the ministry said.