Russia's APEC integration 'just beginning' - Experts
MOSCOW. September 2. KAZINFORM Russia is hoping that the APEC summit it is hosting on September 2-9 will boost its economic involvement in the Asian-Pacific region, but experts said an economic overhaul of the country's far eastern regions is in order to pull off the plan, RIA Novosti reported.
"It's a good agenda, but there's an open field for work," said Andrei Ostrovsky, deputy director of the Institute of the Far East at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit is taking place on the Russky Island in the city of Vladivostok in Russia's Primorye Region on September 2 to 9.
This is the first time Russia, an APEC member since 1998, is hosting the summit of the group, created in 1989 to promote economic cooperation among the countries and regions - such as Taipei and Hong Kong - of the Pacific Rim.
Russia's involvement with the group used to be formal: First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov admitted at a press conference in Moscow last Tuesday that the country was represented at most previous summits by rank-and-file embassy staff.
But now Moscow wants half of its total trade turnover to come from APEC, Shuvalov said.
Trade turnover with APEC economies stood at $96 billion, or 23 percent of the country's total, in the first half of 2012, according to Russian State Statistics Service. The European Union is Russia's biggest trade partner, with a turnover of $200 billion (almost 50 percent of the total) over the same period.
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