Putin Is Pleased With The State Of Russian-Uzbek Economic Relations

The Russian President is satisfied with the way Russian-Uzbek economic ties are developing. Addressing an enlarged Russian-Uzbek meeting that followed his tete-a-tete conversation with Uzbek President Islam Karimov, Putin stressed that the volume of commercial exchange between the two countries increased 17% last year and reached $3 billion. At the same time, he pointed out that there was a certain problem in bilateral trade, which resulted from the fact that Uzbek imports to Russia exceeded Russia's exports to Uzbekistan by 40%, and emphasized that the task facing the two countries was to recover the balance by increasing the volume of Russian exports. In Putin's opinion, cooperation and joint ventures might be a good solution. It is necessary to develop new industries as well as maintain old production facilities.