Russia and Azerbaijan need to pay more attention to the development of economic relations between the regions, the head of the Republic of Dagestan Ramazan Abdulatipov said, speaking with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza on the sidelines of the Azerbaijani-Russian inter-regional forum in Baku.
"We have great prospects of relations between our countries, at the same time I believe that we are developing cooperation at the international level, but yet are poorly working at inter-regional level. This trend should be strengthened, and the Azerbaijani-Russian forum in Baku contributes to the development of relations between our regions. We should expand the representation of regions in the future: three Russian governors are not enough, as well as 10 projects, because each of the subjects of the Russian Federation and Azerbaijan may sign dozens of such agreements," Ramazan Abdulatipov noted.
The head of Dagestan also stressed the importance of filling the inter-regional cooperation with concrete projects in promising areas of interaction. "It would be possible to choose joint inter-regional projects for this forum and create a special fund for their financing, especially in the spheres of agricultural production and processing industry," he said.
Ramazan Abdulatipov revealed opportunities for effective economic communication citing the interaction with Dagestan. "An Azerbaijani businessman told me that it is difficult to carry agricultural products through the customs and Russia's territory, and I said to him: "Why do you make these products on the territory of Azerbaijan? We will give you a territory in the Derbent region, and you, being inside the Russian Federation, will be able to produce and sell these products on favorable terms," the head of the republic noted.
Dagestan also offers to cooperate in tourism. "Marine tourism in the Caspian Sea almost does not work. Then, the rail transportation is not really used in tourism: we can create Baku-Makhachkala and Derbent-Baku tourist routes," Ramazan Abdulatipov said.
"In my today's speech, I paid attention to the whole list of goods that Azerbaijanis buy in other countries at exorbitant prices, although they are produced in Dagestan. There is a large program of import substitution in Dagestan, we began to produce more than 80 types of products from scratch," the head of Dagestan cited one more example of a possible cooperation in the future.
