Belgian trade mission headed by crown prince to arrive in Russia

MOSCOW, April 4 (Itar-Tass) -- Crown Prince of Belgium, Duke of
Brabant Philippe will begin an official part of his visit in Russia on
Monday. He will head the Belgian trade mission that will stay in Russia until April 8.
More than 400 businesspeople from 210 companies will accompany the
crown prince. Belgian Acting Foreign Minister Stephen Vanackere and the economy ministers of the Brussels capital region and Wallonia, Benoit Cerexhe and Jean-Claude Marcourt, as well as the general director of the Flemish agency for international business will also arrive in Russia.
The delegation will begin their trip to Russia with a visit to
Skolkovo, where, according to Belgian Ambassador in Russia Guy Trouveroy, "no contracts are planned, this is an introductory meeting." The Belgian businesspeople headed by the prince will meet with Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Minister of Economic Development Elvira Nabiullina and Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Khristenko, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and the top managers from Gazprom and Lukoil. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will receive the Belgian crown prince on April 5.
"We hope that after these negotiations, the doors to cooperation will open even wider," the prince's adviser, Director General of the Belgian Foreign Trade Agency Marc Bogaerts said. "Relations with Russia as a member of the BRIC format are very important for us." The Belgian delegation intends to focus attention on the cooperation with the Russian capital and plans to hold joint seminars on medicine and transport. A Belgian company will present new alarm systems for the Moscow metro.
The space industry is a traditional sphere of bilateral cooperation. The Belgian crown prince will award Russian cosmonauts Sergei Zaletin, Valery Korzun, Gennady Padalka and Roman Romanenko in Moscow. This awarding ceremony is symbolic, because an ESA astronaut from Belgium Frank de Winne was the first European ISS commander in 2009.
On April 6, the guests from Belgium will travel by the Sapsan
high-speed train to St. Petersburg, where a contract in the car making is planned to sign. The governors of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region will meet the mission.
Philippe's wife Princess Mathilde, who is accompanying the Belgian
crown prince, will visit the Hermitage State Museum and the
Petropavlovskaya Fortress in St. Petersburg.
Belgian Acting Prime Minister Yves Leterme and Dmitry Medvedev reached an agreement on Philippe's visit in Russia during Medvedev's visit in Brussels in December 2010. "We are firmly convinced that this visit is timely," Leterme said then. "Many Belgian enterprises have invested and continue to invest in Russia's economy, thus showing an interest in President Medvedev's policy aimed at modernization of the Russian Federation," he said.
The bilateral trade reached 11 billion dollars for the past year, the Belgian ambassador said. "Belgium considers Russia as a long-term partner. The Russian market is interesting not for a year or two, but for a long time. Therefore, many Belgian companies continue to make investments in Russia," he told Itar-Tass. In this respect, the Belgian ambassador stated that the country's trade mission is mainly seeking "to open up new opportunities for business" during their Russian visit. The Belgian diplomat noted construction, the hydrocarbon supplies, high technologies and the chemical industry as the top priorities of bilateral cooperation. He did not rule out that bilateral business agreements would be concluded in Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara, where Belgian companies already operate.