Greenwood business park outside Moscow 'to boost Chinese trade'

The Greenwood business park in the Moscow Region due to host Chinese companies may become a major location for "civilized" Chinese trade in Russia, the deputy minister of industry and trade has said

The Greenwood business park in the Moscow Region due to host Chinese companies may become a major location for "civilized" Chinese trade in Russia, the deputy minister of industry and trade has said.

"Goods being supplied from China more and more often come to Russia through civilized channels, not through markets," Stanislav Naumov told Chinese businessmen at the 2010 World Expo in the city of Shanghai.

"We see that our consumers are interested in respectively cheap and high-quality production. This means that after Greenwood, other modern trade centers, where one can buy such production, may appear," he said.

The Greenwood business park being created in the city of Krasnogorsk, to the northwest of Moscow, is the largest Chinese investment project of such a large scale in Russia's non-oil and gas sector, Naumov said.

Consumption in Russia is about to reach a pre-crisis level, he said. In the first part in 2010, retail turnover stood at 8.91 trillion rubles ($290 billion), which is 3.9 percent more than in the same period on 2009, he said.

Fifteen Russian regions have presented their investment projects in the Russian Pavilion during four months of the World Expo, the official said, adding that most of them were small and medium business projects.

"Among them are projects of young inventors... in the energy, transport, medical and information technology spheres," he said and called on Chinese businessmen to invest in the projects.

September 28 marks the Russian Pavilion's National Pavilion Day at the World Expo.

According to the Russian trade ministry, Russian-Chinese trade turnover has increased by more than 56 percent to $25.5 billion in the first part of 2010, year-on-year, which makes China Russia's second main trade partner after the European Union.

MOSCOW, September 1 (RIA Novosti)