Japan’s economy minister visiting Russia to scale up bilateral cooperation

TOKYO, January 11. /TASS/. Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko, who is in charge of economic relations with Moscow, is starting his visit to Russia on Wednesday. The visit is expected to focus on further development of the economic cooperation between Moscow and Tokyo and the implementation of the accords reached earlier as part of an eight-point plan proposed by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Japanese delegation that the minister heads also includes deputies of the country’s upper house of parliament belonging to the Russian-Japanese Discussion Club on cooperation between the two countries. They are planning to meet Russia’s Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko, chairman of the Federation Council international committee Konstantin Kosachev and Russian senators. Kosachev told TASS earlier that "it is a very vivid example of how parliamentary diplomacy and government structures can work together in the synergy regime." After visits to Japan of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Matviyenko at the end of 2016 "a principally new inter-parliamentary cooperation body - the consultative council on promoting inter-parliamentary cooperation between Russia and Japan - was established," Kosachev said. "The council has already begun its work and on January 11 we expect in Moscow a delegation of our counterparts from the upper house of the Japanese parliament, who are members of the so-called Discussion Club on cooperation with Russia," Kosachev added. The eight-point plan, which Japan’s Prime Minister Abe had proposed to President Putin during their meeting in Sochi in May last year, laid the basis for developing bilateral cooperation. The plan stipulates the development of bilateral cooperation in the sphere of energy, small and medium business, the Far East industrialization, the expansion of the export base, humanitarian exchanges and also in the field of advanced technologies, including nuclear power engineering. Read more