DUSHANBE, January 22, 2014, Asia-Plus -- The 12th meeting of the Tajik-Russian intergovernmental commission for trade and economic cooperation opened in Dushanbe today.

In parallel, a conference entitled “Russia-Tajikistan: Business Dialogue” opened in the Tajik capital.

The event brought together more than 30 representatives to discuss the investment attraction issues and ways to strengthen business partnership between the two countries.

The conference is expected to result in signing of a number of cooperation documents, including a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on cooperation between the State Unitary Enterprise (SUE) “NI i PII” of Tajikistan’s Ministry of Transport and Russia’s Closed Joint-Stock Company (CJSC) “Vozrozhdeniye.”

125 Tajik-Russian joint ventures now operate in Tajikistan; fifteen of them have been launched over the past three years.  The majority of Tajik-Russian joint ventures is based in Dushanbe and cities of the northern Sughd province.

In 2013, a two-way trade between Tajikistan and Russia valued at 1.029 billion U.S. dollars, which was 96.4 percent of the 2012 level.  This consisted of Tajikistan’s exports to Russia estimated at 123.095 million U.S. dollars and Tajikistan’s imports from the Russian Federation worth 906.2 million U.S. dollars.

Russia is one of the main trading partners of Tajikistan.  Last year, the Russian Federation accounted for 10.6 percent of Tajikistan’s exports and 22 percent of Tajikistan’s imports.