Mishustin called interaction with allies the first task of the government this year

Strengthening interaction with allies and searching for promising partners is the first task that the government needs to solve in 2023, said Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, speaking with a report on the work of the government in the State Duma.

Following the talks between President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Moscow, a joint statement was adopted on the development of practical cooperation between Russia and China in the medium term, Mishustin recalled. “On its basis, my colleague, Premier of the State Council of China, Mr. Li Qiang, and I will soon approve the 2030 Plan. Which will include all the main areas of joint work with our Chinese partners,” the prime minister said.

This year, Russia is chairing the bodies of the Eurasian Economic Union, the prime minister recalled. “We plan to take measures to increase joint projects in energy, transport, and digital transformation. We will focus on the formation of alternative supply chains and improvement of the investment climate,” he said.

Russia will continue to develop infrastructure within the North-South global corridor, as well as in the Azov-Black Sea and Eastern directions, Mishustin added: this is necessary to increase the supply of Russian goods to new markets. The expansion of these corridors will increase the volume of international traffic over the next three years by more than a third, the prime minister stressed. “By the end of next year, we plan to increase the capacity of the Eastern Railway Range to 180 million tons,” the Prime Minister said.

Negotiations between the Russian and Chinese sides in an expanded format were held on March 21 in the Kremlin.

The night before, Putin and Xi Jinping discussed issues on the bilateral agenda, “topical international and regional problems,” and at the narrow-format talks exchanged views on the prospects for developing relations between countries and strengthening coordination in the international arena, the Russian president noted, without specifying details. The first talks went on for more than 4.5 hours behind closed doors without members of the delegations – tête-à-tête.

Putin noted that the trade turnover between the countries in 2022 reached a record high of $185 billion, and in 2023 the countries will reach a trade volume of $200 billion. He also specified that national currencies are increasingly being used in mutual trade and two thirds of the trade turnover between countries is carried out in rubles and yuan.

Russia prioritizes investment cooperation with China, Mishustin said as he opened a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Government House on March 21. According to him, the portfolio of bilateral projects being worked out by the intergovernmental investment commission exceeds $165 billion. As the prime minister said, the energy partnership is of a strategic nature, which covers all industry areas – natural gas, oil and oil products, coal, electricity and “peaceful” atom. Cooperation with China is also taking place in high-tech areas: aircraft manufacturing, mechanical engineering, machine tool building, space research, as well as in “end-to-end” technologies aimed at creating innovative products and providing services.