BUDAPEST, July 24. /TASS/. Central Asia will start playing a more important role in trade with Europe amid sanctions against Russia and the formation of a new world order, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said on Monday.
"The normal functioning of transport routes and trade relations has become almost impossible" amid the conflict in Ukraine and the EU’s sanctions against Russia, he told a press conference in Budapest following talks with Kyrgyzstan’s Foreign Minister Zheenbek Kulubayev. "This is why physical routes and to a certain extent sources of supplies in trade with the East have moved to the region of Central Asia. Hungary, which has an observer status in the Organization of Turkic States, is already present in this region, and this provides us with a strategic advantage. We do not have to start cooperation from scratch," Szijjarto said.
"Now that a new world order is being formed," Hungary has started "building relations with the Turkic world earlier than others and has already tapped [beneficial] positions in Central Asia," the minister stressed. This is particularly demonstrated by trade turnover between Hungary and Kyrgyzstan, which climbed by 71% in 2022 and 3.5-fold in the first half of this year, he said, adding that the two countries’ companies cooperate in such areas as energy, the food industry, water supply and irrigation.