Visiting Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai and his Russian counterpart Igor Shuvalov signed the minutes of meeting of the 15th session of the Vietnam-Russia Inter-Governmental Committee on Economic-Trade and Scientific-Technological Cooperation in Moscow on Oct. 19.

The two Co-Chairmen also agreed that the next session will be held in Hanoi in the second half of 2013.

They witnessed the signing of a statement on the establishment of a joint high-level working group to boost prioritised cooperation projects between the two countries.

The two sides held that the Vietnam-Russia political relations have seen fine development with high level of trust.

Economic-trade cooperation developed dynamically, with two-way trade turnover in 2012 being estimated at 3 billion USD.

As the figure did not match potential, the two sides expected to increase the trade value to 7 billion USD in 2015.

The two sides agreed to make breakthroughs to accelerate bilateral economic and trade cooperation, including the early negotiations of a free trade area agreement between Vietnam and the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus .

They agreed upon the roadmap of the Vietnam-Russian joint action plan on economic, trade and investment until 2015, the establishment of the high-level joint working group led by Vietnamese Minister of Industry and Trade and Russian Economic Development Minister to speed up joint cooperation projects.

The two sides also agreed to boost cooperation between the two countries’ localities, especially between Vietnamese ones and Russian far-eastern region, Ulyanov province and St. Petersburg .

They discussed and agreed measures on strengthening ties in the fields of industry, agriculture, tourism, finance, banking, health, education, telecommunications, science-technology and energy.

Shuvalov affirmed that the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus will negotiate with Vietnam in early 2013 in order to sign an agreement in establishing a quadripartite FTA.

He added that Russia pays much attention to build a nuclear power plant in Vietnam with the highest quality and strongly supports the direct cooperation between the two countries’ localities, as well as encourages Vietnamese businesses to invest in Russia .

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will pay an official visit to Vietnam in early November to further boost and strengthen the comprehensive cooperation between the two countries, he added.

Within the framework of the session, the Vietnamese guests visited two titanium plants of AVISMA company in Sverdlov province. At a meeting with the provincial authorities, Hai said that the province and Vietnam’s localities have many cooperation potentials, especially in the fields of heavy industry, metallurgy and mining.-VNA