Finnish Minister for Foreign Trade and Development comes to Moscow

HELSINKI, March 13 (Itar-Tass) -- Aspects of the Russia-Finland
cooperation in energy, transport, ship construction will be on the agenda of a two-day visit to Russia, which Finland's Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Paavo Vayrynen will start on Sunday.
According to Foreign Ministry of Finland's Head of Department of
Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia Nina Vaskunlakhti "St. Petersburg will host on Monday the 12th meeting of the Russia-Finland
intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation, where co-chairs are Paavo Varrynen and Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov."
It is expected that the sides will discuss trade and economic
cooperation as well as Russia's joining the WTO.
Finland's foreign ministry says that Russia's modernization and
emerging opportunities for further bilateral relations will be on agenda, too. Paavo Vayrynen and Sergei Ivanov will ink a Russia-Finland declaration on partnership in modernisation.
Previous meeting of the commission was organized in Finland in April of 2010, where representatives of the two countries discussed cooperation in more than 20 sectors, cooperation of the regions and other topics.
Russia's Trade Representation in Finland reports that the past year 2010 was the most successful over the past two decades for the bilateral cooperation between the two countries.
"The foreign trade turnover between Russia and Finland, according to the customs authorities' statistics, jumped by 27.7 percent to 16.8
billion dollars," Russia's Trade Representative Valery Shlyamin said
adding that "Russia is expected to retain a status of Finland's major
trade partner: the share of our country in Finland's trade turnover is
forecast to make 13.3 percent."
In early 2011, he continued, "the trade turnover is approaching the pre-crisis level and there are every preconditions for scientific and technical cooperation."
"With quite big trade turnover our countries have very close ties: for example, Russia's about 160,000 jobs depend from economic relations with Finland, while in Finland, with population of five million, about 53-54 thousand jobs more or less depend on trade with Russia."