UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 13, 2017. The 2nd Uzbek-Russian Business Forum will take place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on September 26. South Ural Chamber of Commerce and Industry, whose President Fedor Degtyarev chairs the Russian-Uzbek Business Council, acts as one of the event’s primary coordinators, the CCI’s press service reports.

‘It was Degtyarev who, following his appointment as chair of the council in June 2016, put forth the idea of holding the business forum in question. The very first forum was held in Tashkent last October. Around a hundred bilateral meetings and business talks took place there; a number of companies landed contracts on setting up machine-building joint ventures and on supplying metallurgical goods and equipment to their partners. The forum’s contract exchange proved very popular with the participant companies, which was the reason why we decided to make it an annual event,’ the press service says.

The Southern Urals are among the Russian constituencies where Russia and Uzbekistan’s cooperation seems particularly successful. Over a hundred Chelyabinsk Region-based companies are currently doing business with their Uzbek partners. Remarkably, Chelyabinsk Region’s trade turnover with Uzbekistan is the country’s third largest at the moment, outstripped only by those of Moscow and Saint Petersburg.