Vice President of the Russian Federation Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Georgi Petrov reviewed the result of bilateral trade cooperation, saying the trade exchanges have not yet matched the two countries’ great potential.

He said he had recently visited Vietnam and found this Southeast Asian market extremely attractive to foreign businesses. He expressed his hope that after the workshop, Russian businesses will build a closer partnership with Vietnamese businesses.

Sharing the same view, the Vietnamese ambassador to Russia Bui Dinh Dinh agreed that two-way trade remains modest, reaching only US$1 billion last year and that both Vietnam and Russia should cooperate more effectively to raise their bilateral trade value to US$3 billion by 2010.