Paying off of Russian debt to Macedonia should stimulate development of bilateral trade

Macedonia wants the paying off of the Russian debt to stimulate bilateral trade and economic cooperation. Chairman of the government of the Republic of Macedonia Branko Crvenkovski spoke about it on Friday, addressing the business forum "Russia-Macedonia" in the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

According to him, at the conversations with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Thursday they discussed three variants of paying off the Russian debt to Macedonia.

Branko Crvenkovski noted that Macedonia will have to choose one of these variants.

"We are interested not in simply getting money, but we want the process of paying off the debt to stimulate our trade and economic cooperation," said the Chairman of the Macedonian government.

He explained that the Macedonian side is interested in deliveries of Russian equipment for the energy systems and in the opening in Moscow of a distribution center for trading in consumer goods from Macedonia.

Branko Crvenkovski reminded the audience that the share of Macedonia in the clearing debt of the Soviet Union amounts to 7.5 percent, or 96 million clearing dollars.