Turnover between Russia and ASEAN nations rises five-fold in ten years and reaches $21.5 bln - Deputy PM Dvorkovich

JAKARTA, April 20. /TASS/. The mutual turnover between Russia and member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) reached $21.5 bln and rose five times during the last decade, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Arcady Dvorkovich said on Monday at the plenary session of the World Economic Forum on East Asia. "Economic ties of Russia and ASEAN states have become significantly active in recent years. The mutual turnover rose by more than five times to $21.5 bln in 2014 since the first Russia-ASEAN forum in 2005," Dvorkovich said. Russia considers promising to establish interaction with ASEAN partners in supplies of the Russian liquefied natural gas, civil helicopters and aircraft, motor vehicles and satellite avionics, he added. "We are ready to take part in the development of the telecom infrastructure on island territories of ASEAN countries and in the setup of an automatic management system of freight and passenger traffic for all kinds of transport with application of GLONASS/GPS technologies", Dvorkovich said. The linkage to integration processes underway in ASEAN in the interests of the socioeconomic development of Russia, primarily its Siberian and Far Eastern regions, is an important area of the national foreign economic activity, the deputy prime minister said. "We consider it beneficial in such a context to bring in contacts between the Eurasian Economic Union and the ASEAN Community under establishment. The conclusion of a free trade agreement with Vietnam is currently on the agenda. We hope it will be a pilot project in trade liberalization with all the ten ASEAN member-states. Stable ties between business communities are also a good pillar for development of economic relations," Dvorkovich added. The ASEAN Economic Community contemplating the establishment of a common goods and labor market for ten key nations of the region, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Philippines, should start working by 2015 year-end. Read more