Activities of the Russian Federation in Pakistan

Trade Representation of the Russian Federation in Pakistan is the governmental agency of the Russian Federation that promotes trade and economic cooperation. It represents and safeguards state interests in all aspects of external economic activities, including bilateral foreign trade and investment cooperation between Russia and Pakistan.
The First Session of the Russian-Pakistan Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation was held on 21 September 2010 in Moscow. The Sides noted that during the recent years the trade and economic cooperation between Russian Federation and Pakistan has had the positive trend, and emphasized the availability of the necessary preconditions for increasing of the bilateral trade turnover by 2010. The sides have agreed to take the further measures to achieve the level of the bilateral cooperation corresponding to existing potential, and increase the volume of the Russian-Pakistan trade.
The Sides noticed the availability of great potential for development of cooperation in the areas of power, oil and gas, telecommunications, metallurgy, machinery and automobile industry, banking and financial services, construction of highways and pipelines, air transport service, science and technology, tourism and underlined that there is considerable scope for cooperation in sectors such as minerals development, railway and water transport, information technologies, biotechnology, nano-technology, construction, fertilizers and chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agricultural and processed food products, ready made garments and textiles, gems and jewelry.
The president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari visited Russia in May of 2011 at the invitation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and held a one-on-one meeting with his counterpart. It was the first official visit of the head of state of Pakistan in the past 37 years. The leaders agreed that Pakistan and Russia shared common objectives of peace and development and should cooperate to achieve these goals. The two sides welcomed the signing of the agreements between Russian and Pakistan on Air Transport and investment promotion as well as the Memorandums of Understanding in energy cooperation and cooperation in agricultural sector.
For its part Russian Trade Representation makes every effort in order to raise the level of cooperation in areas of people-to-people contact, business-to-business ties and economic and cultural relations.
(The writer is Representative of Russian Federation in Islamabad, Pakistan.)