BANGKOK, May 22. /TASS/. Anti-Russian sanctions may help to increase Russian-Thailand trade turnover to $10 billion, Russian Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov has told reporters following the first day of 2022 APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade Meeting (MRT) hosted by Thailand.

The minister held a bilateral meeting with the Thai side on the sidelines of the event. "We have huge potential in the trade sector," he said.

Russian-Thai trade turnover stood at $2.8 billion in 2021. According to Reshetnikov, the potential of bilateral trade is "many times higher." "The benchmark of $10 billion, which we had set before, still remains our goal, an achievable goal," the minister continued. "Today, we discussed with [Thailand’s] Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Commerce [Jurin Laksanawisit] ways of approaching this benchmark."

"New opportunities have emerged, and this is linked to the numerous practical tasks that we are solving today, with car industry being one of them," the minister said, speaking about new perspectives for bilateral trade and economic cooperation, which emerged when the West imposed its anti-Russian sanctions.

"Thailand has a very powerful car and car component production industry," he continued. "This is what we need at the moment, this is an opportunity for imports, <…> for developing joint production. This is not the only area of cooperation, which is emerging now, so I think that we will jointly search for areas of cooperation and <…> the trade turnover goal of $10 billion fit into this situation perfectly well."

"The figure seems way easier to achieve if we take a realistic look at the current situation," Reshetnikov added.