The governor of Russia’s Volgograd province, Sergey Bozhenov, has spoken highly of the contributions made by the Vietnamese community in the province at a recent working session with Vietnamese Ambassador Pham Xuan Son.

The official agreed with a proposal from his guest - who is on a three-day visit from August 22-25 - that Vietnam and Volgograd should put forth measures to raise their trade value from the current level of 9 million USD.

He said the province always welcomes foreign investors including those from Vietnam.

He also agreed that trade promotion conferences should take place between Vietnam and Russia in order to fulfil the target of raising their two-way trade to 7 billion USD by 2015.

For his part, Ambassador Son asked the two countries’ localities to expand economic-trade cooperation, especially strong areas such as agricultural production, tourism, ship building, oil and gas exploration and education.

While expressing thanks to local authorities for their assistance to the Vietnamese community, Son said he hopes that the province will continue supporting them in their lives there, thus aiding both the development of the locality and the Vietnam-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership.

VNA