Russia, Latvia seal economic cooperation agreement

13.10.2006

MOSCOW, October 13 (Itar-Tass) — Russia and Latvia have sealed an economic cooperation agreement and an agreement on creating an inter-governmental commission.

Russian Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and Latvian Economics Minister Aigars Stokenbergs put their signatures to the documents.

They also agreed to speed up the preparation of agreement on encouragement of mutual investments.

The agreement on inter-governmental commission has a certain political meaning, Gref was quoted by Prime-Tass as saying on Friday.

“Over the past several years our bilateral relations were different,” he said pointing out that the yet-to-be commission will focus on deeper cooperation in economy, culture, science and education.

The two countries’ economic potential is rather vast, and Russia and Lithuania can step up cooperation in many areas, such as high technologies, tourism, agriculture, energy and machine building industry.

Stokenbergs pointed out that Latvia is interested in Russia’s fast-paced economic development as this stimulates Latvia’s export.

Last year, Latvia’s export to Russia went up by 50 percent, and in January-June 2006 - by 23 percent.

Gref pointed out that Russia is interested in changing the structure of bilateral trade.