Russian Vice Premier: Commodity Turnover Between Siberian Regions And Mongolia May Increase Threefold

It is highly likely that the commodity turnover between Siberian regions and Mongolia will increase by 2.5-3 times in the near future, RIA Novosti was told by Alexei Gordeyev, Russia's vice premier, agriculture minister and co-chairman of a Russian-Mongolian intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation, which has just completed a session in Irkutsk, Siberia. The conclusion made at the session was that, despite the fact that the Siberian Federal District handles more than 70% of the Russian-Mongolian commodity turnover, bilateral trade still falls short of its heyday in the Soviet times, when Russia annually imported 90,000 tons of meat from Mongolia. In the recent years, this amount diminished sixfold. Results of the Irkutsk session were summed up in a memorandum on expansion of trade, economic, scientific, technical and cultural cooperation. The sides also signed an agreement on cooperation between Mongolia's Selenga aimak and Russia's Ust-Orda Buryat Autonomous Area.