A road map was signed during the meeting between Alexey Overchuk and Shahin Mustafayev in Baku. The document includes bilateral cooperation in various areas.
Russia's Deputy Minister Dmitry Volvach spoke about the road map signed by Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk and Azerbaijan's Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev, the department’s press service reported.
He noted that the document envisages the adoption of concrete steps to develop cooperation in economic, trade and investment, industrial, agricultural, transport, energy, tourism, social and humanitarian spheres.
The parties plan in the next two to three years to develop bilateral business cooperation, hold interregional forums and business missions, expand production cooperation and sales markets using digital tools.
Moreover, Moscow and Baku agreed to expand mutual supplies of food and agricultural goods, as well as strengthen cooperation between livestock and crop farms. All processes will be implemented by the working group on agriculture.
The country plans to implement a number of oil and gas engineering projects and agricultural machinery supply projects.
"The action plan for the development of key areas of Russian-Azerbaijani cooperation for the next three years has been prepared to develop the results achieved as part of the implementation of the six roadmaps signed in 2018. The new document focused on the development of a key transport artery - the Western route of the North-South ITC, reconstruction of checkpoints and border infrastructure to increase capacity," Dmitry Volvach said.
In addition, he spoke about an extensive range of measures to develop tourism. Volvach noted that mutual tourist flow indicators have reached pre-pandemic levels. Thus, over 9 months of last year, 188,000 tourist trips were made to Russia from Azerbaijan, as well as 369,000 trips to Azerbaijan from Russia, which is higher by half than in 2022.
The Deputy Minister also highlighted the development of cooperation in the social and humanitarian spheres. Moscow and Baku will develop relations in culture and education. In addition, it is planned to increase the number of students from Azerbaijan in Russian universities, hold joint sports and youth events, as well as organize advanced training courses for teaching staff.
“The Russia-Azerbaijan ties deserve high praise in all respects. Cooperation in the field of transport and logistics is progressing, and the capacity of checkpoints across the Russian-Azerbaijani state border has increased. There is a positive dynamics in the development of mutual trade - trade turnover between Russia and Azerbaijan increased by 17.5% in 2023. Russia is one of the five countries that attracted the largest volumes of direct investment into the Azerbaijani economy, investing $295 million in 2023," Dmitry Volvach said.
In conclusion, he added that the implementation of the initiatives to develop key areas of cooperation will help strengthen relations between Baku and Moscow, as well as achieve new historical records in mutual turnover.
