Professor of IIBE Sergey Sevastianov: “Summit in Vladivostok has a top priority”

Doctor of political sciences, professor of the Department of World Economics and Economical Theory of the International Business and Economics Institute, Sergey Sevastianov has recently returned from Moscow where he took part as an external expert at the First Asian-Pacific Forum.

The forum took place on November, 28-29 in President Hotel in Moscow. It had the highest level guests: senior management of the Academy of Sciences in Russia, representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Economical Development, Ambassador of the USA, General Secretary of the Association of the Universities ATR and rectors of the leading Moscow universities. 

The forum was organized by the Russian Center of Researches АPEC and the Russian Council of International Affairs that had been recently created.

- The participants of the Forum have discussed the region’s problems in the view of the coming summit in Vladivostok,- Sergey Vitalievich said, – Its purpose was to coordinate the work of the expert society and state organizations taking part in preparation of the summit.

The participants discussed Russia’s readiness for APEC, current situation of affairs in Asian-Pacific region as well as most vital questions of the coming summit.

-At present there is a number of traditional topics that are interesting for all the APEC members: energy cooperation in the region, logistics and transport, cooperation in education and innovations, - explained Sergey Sevastianov. – One of the newer subjects that Russia will offer at the Summit-2012 is going to be food supply security. It is quite clear that there is a shortage of food products in the APR and Russia is capable of filling in this gap in the world market.

The experts also set hopes on Vladivostok summit as it could give a new impulse to development of the organization.

- On the one hand Russia should clearly state during the summit what it can offer to APR and what it would like to receive from the region. Cooperation with different countries of the region has some peculiarities. Thus, countries of the North Eastern Asia, such as China, Korea, Japan see Russia as close and affordable resource base. As for countries of South Eastern Asia, such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam, they regard us as a partner in high technologies, space exploration and nuclear power. Our top priority at the summit is to offer new projects to all the neighbours in our region based on high technologies and innovations and to declare ourselves as a high-technology nation, - resumed Sergei Sevastianov.