Putin: Russia to ensure necessary pace of economic growth

MOSCOW, Jun 6 (PRIME) -- The government will try to give a new boost for the Russian economy and ensure a necessary pace of growth taking into account indicators of countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with China Media Group released on Wednesday ahead of the SCO summit.

The SCO was initially established as a relatively modest organization to deal with issues between Russia, China and a number of former Soviet republics, Putin said.

“Let me repeat, our goals were relatively modest, but in the process of gradually addressing them we realized that we have many things in common, in the sense that we can achieve more significant results than simply frontier matters. And the SCO began to develop,” Putin said.

“After India and Pakistan were admitted to the SCO, it became clear that comprehensive work should begin, begin in China, and also that the SCO has become a global organization.”

Putin said that Russia supports the Belt and Road Initiative and believes it to be important and prospective.

“We have always supported this idea. President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative has both economic and humanitarian elements. First of all, we are speaking about the economy and the infrastructure. We believe this is a useful, important and promising initiative. It meets our efforts to build the Eurasian Economic Union,” he said.

“We welcome it. However, this is not the only area; we have good plans for industrial cooperation and railway infrastructure development as well. These are all powerful and promising areas that will for sure become the foundation of our cooperation.”

Russia and China should develop digital technologies in the production sector, infrastructure, and the energy sector, Putin also said.

“We need to develop digital technologies in industry, in infrastructure, in energy, including in the electric power industry, and in alternative types of energy,” he said.

Putin also said that Russia offers joint infrastructure projects to South Korea and North Korea, namely a railroad between three countries, a gas pipeline and energy facilities.

“Primarily, these would be infrastructure projects, such as railway construction (actually, China could join them) between Russia, North Korea and South Korea. We are talking about pipelines. We can also think about building other energy facilities,” Putin said.

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