The President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov received the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Ivanov at Oqsaroy residence in Tashkent on 4 July, UzA reported.

Uzbek and Russian leaders – Islam Karimov and Vladimir Putin – signed the agreement on strategic partnership in 2004 and the agreement on allied relations in 2005. These documents serve as a solid legal basis for the development of all-round mutually beneficial cooperation between the two states.

Today the Uzbek-Russian relations are developing dynamically in all spheres. In particular, the volume of mutual commodity turnover grew by 42% and exceeded USD 3 billion in 2006. The structure of exports and imports has expanded, and their volumes are growing. Last year Russia purchased over 1 million tonnes of agricultural products from Uzbekistan, which is 3 times more compared to 2005.

The trade and economic cooperation is developing in the spheres of mechanical engineering, wood processing industry, agriculture, power engineering, electrical engineering and pharmaceutics. Among the priority spheres of cooperation are oil-and-gas, mining, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy. Besides, there are perspectives in such fields, as telecommunications and software, production of building materials, chemical and textile industries, as well as tourism.

Investment cooperation is enhancing too. Currently, there are more than 450 joint ventures in Uzbekistan with participation of Russian investments, and nearly 300 enterprises with Uzbek capital are operating in Russia.

Cooperation is developing in military-technical spheres as well. Such interaction envisages supplies of military products, update of defense technology, staff training, carrying out joint exercises, drawing up interstate programmes on space exploration.

It should be noted that in connection with activation in the recent times of bilateral economic cooperation and in order to improve the activity of Uzbek-Russian intergovernmental joint commission on trade and economic cooperation, the presidents of the two states have agreed to raise the status of this body. During the recent informal CIS summit in Saint Petersburg Vladimir Putin informed that the First Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov would be the co-chairman of this commission from the Russian side.

"This decision of the Russian leader is the evidence that Russia attaches great importance to the relations with Uzbekistan and strives for increase of cooperation rates," said President Islam Karimov during the meeting. "The Uzbek-Russian relations are developing intensively, the ties are based on mutual trust and the cooperation has great perspectives. The structure of your delegation also shows the desire of Russia to develop interaction with Uzbekistan. We believe that the negotiations held in Tashkent will be fruitful".

Sergey Ivanov noted that Russia considered Uzbekistan as one of its important partners in Central Asia, and main goal of the visit is consideration of new opportunities of further development of mutually beneficial ties. In particular, he emphasized that the sides had vast potential for further expansion of scientific-practical cooperation in the field of high-tech.

Uzreport.com