»» Archive  »  Visit of the President of the Russian Chamber of Trade and Industry Y. Primakov to Latvia 20.05.2010 (16297)

May 20, a lecture of President of the Russian

Chamber of Trade and Industry, Academician Yevgeny Primakov was held in the Big aul of Latvian University.
The topic of the speech was the economic and political trends in the modern world.
Y. Primakov is the prominent political worker of Russia, during the period 1980-2000-ies managed the posts: the Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russian Federation.

The rector of the University of Latvia opened the meeting by expressing his gratitude in Latvian language to those present and his confidence that the lecture will be usefor for everyone.
At the beginning of the meeting Yevgeny Primakov said:
«Unfortunately I do not know the Latvian language, but I hope that the rector have not said anything bad about myself!» and thanked for the opportunity to public speaking.At the lecture Y. Primakov highlighted several aspects:
Russian international situation, the modern position in the relations between Russian and USA, Latvia and Russia, the economic framework for cooperation, crisis overcoming and other aspects.
 According to the academician, Russian has now reached the „bottom“, however, there are the positive prerequisites for the economic increase: the development of the innovations and knowledge-intensive production. It allows not to reduce the socio-economic standard of living in the country and to have enough sustained political and economic stability.
For comparison, USA is the supplier of 20% of high-tech products on world markets, Germany – 9%, Russian – only 0,5%.
Russian is the export-commodity country that has its strong influence during the crisis. Although, China has a large share of manufactured exports, at the same time they managed to rebuild and restructure the significant share of exports to domestic the purchase by increasing the national purchasing power in order to balance the economy during the crisis.
 «The relationships will develop within the interests of all countries that is an objective economic development of the EU, but we would like not to be forgotten that is happening nowadays, especially in relationships between Russian and EU.»
Y. Primakov noted the positive movement in the development of relations between Latvia and Russia. The port, the energy and food sectors are the attractive for the development. Russian consumes 60% of the food export. Of course, it will not replace their products completely, as imports, competition will keep the quality and price level of the product.
The important aspect in the relations between our countries is the impact of the events of the World War II. Over 27 million people died in those years, and the mentality of people should be taken into account.
The development of the world is multipolar, especially now with the advent of the new administration of the USA, and Russian supports this development.
At the end of the lecture, Primakov answered numerous questions from the audience.
In response, the rector of the University of Latvia thanked for the informative lecture, expressed confidence in „God loves a trinity“, and that Yevgeny Primakov will arrive to Latvia in the future!
As the remuneration for the lecture, the rector presented the memorable LVL 1, issued by the Bank of Latvia on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Latvian University.  

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