Rustem Khamitov has held a meeting with Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Netherlands in Russia Ronald Keller

On March 14 the President of Bashkortostan Rustem Khamitov has held a work meeting with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom of Netherlands in Russian Federation Ronald Keller and agricultural consultant of Netherlands’ Embassy in Russia Susan van Tilburg.

The public affairs service of the President RB reports during the meeting the parties were discussing some aspects of external trade circulation between Bashkortostan and Netherlands, problems of attraction of investments to Republican economics and various variants of cooperation with business circles of Netherlands.

“The main thing we are doing today is that we try to create the atmosphere of openness and frankness and our Government works as open, frank and oriented towards meeting the needs of our residents Government. We even announced the slogan “Working for people and with people” and people understand us quite well” – the President of Bashkortostan stated.

“Trade circulation between Bashkortostan and Netherlands is substantial but too one-sided: we mainly deliver oil and oil products for Netherlands but at the same time buy just few technical and innovational wares. Thus, in 2011 our purchases in Holland made up just 15 million dollars – not much” – Rustem Khamitov mentioned and added that there were the directions, which the Republic had to develop – agriculture, first of all.

“Our plant in Neftekamsk manufactures buses jointly with DAF. We were negotiating the possibility to produce trucks here, in our Republic, with DAF. We’d like to ask you to help to progress of these negotiations because now we are too slow. We are ready to provide our Dutch partners with the best and the most comfortable conditions and sure, we want DAF to choose Bashkortostan as the site for production of its trucks. We’d like to continue our negotiations for opening an assembling here” – Rustem Khamitov stated.

He has also added that the republic is interested in production of agricultural machinery on its territory.

“We want to widen our cooperation. It can be interesting for us. We are ready to cultivate potato and to produce meat and milk and, sure, we need your knowledge and technologies, so there are many variants of our cooperation. We’d like to offer you to consider the possibility to organize presentation of our Republic, perhaps, in Embassy or at any other specialized exhibition. We can guarantee frank, honest and quite good job for any investor and I’m ready to take everything, what happens here, on our territory, under my personal control” – the President of Bashkortostan said.

For the reference: the external trade circulation of Bashkortostan and Netherlands in 2011 made up 1,09 billion USD. Oil and oil products make up the lion’s share in Bashkir export structure plus synthetic resins, cyclic hydrocarbons, phenol, solvents, fodders and birch-tree plywood. Bashkortostan imports in its turn liquid electronic flowmeters, flowers and plants, chemical catalysts for purification of oil fractions etc.

In 2011 Dutch business circles have invested 125,3 million USD to Bashkir economics. By the volume of accumulated foreign investments Holland is the leader among other countries. At present time eight Bashkir-Dutch joint ventures work on the territory RB.