Russia and Vietnam plan to increase their trade turnover to $5 billion by 2015, the two countries said in a joint agreement of strategic cooperation on Friday.
"We are going to raise trade turnover to $5 billion by 2015. The strengthening of trade and economic links between Vietnam and countries of the Customs Union [i.e. Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan] will allow us to do that," the countries stated in the agreement.
Bilateral trade turnover grew 55 percent last year to $3.06 billion compared with 2010. As for the first five months of 2012, trade operations between the two states rose 55 percent year-on-year to $1.47 billion.
Among Russian core export products to Vietnam there are vehicles with a 71-percent share in overall export volume to the Southeast Asian country, and a 22-percent share in metals and metal products.
The joint agreement between Moscow and Hanoi also stipulates the creation of favorable terms for Russian-Vietnamese oil and gas joint ventures such as Rusvietpetro and Vietsovpetro as well as for Russian energy companies such as the country's largest private oil company LUKoil.
As for other bilateral oil and gas projects between the two countries, Russian energy giant Gazprom has a 49-percent stake in a project to develop offshore blocks 0.5.2 and 0.5.3 in Vietnam. Total reserves of the two blocks are estimated at 55.6 billion cubic meters of gas and 25.1 million tons of gas condensate.
