Russia and the Czech Republic stand “an excellent chance” of bringing the volume of their economic relations, which has shrunk heavily after the global financial crisis, to its pre-crisis level by the end of 2010, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
“Despite the decline in trade and economic interaction between our countries last year — it was a substantial decline, 38 percent — we are overcoming those difficulties quite confidently at the moment, and for the first eight months of this year, we had growth of 32 percent. So we have an excellent chance of achieving the pre-crisis level before the end of this year,” Putin said during a meeting with Czech President Vaclav Klaus.
Putin named energy, manufacturing, finance and transportation as industries where the two countries have, according to him, good opportunities for cooperation. Klaus also expressed hope that economic relations would improve and said he planned a meeting with Russian business figures for Friday.
(Interfax)
