Russia has taken a new step to promote political and economic relations with Latin America. This is witnessed by the Latin American tour of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Sergei Lavrov focused on promoting bilateral economic cooperation at the meetings with the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico. Russia has been implementing several projects in energy, high-tech, finance, transport, science and technology areas with these countries or is planning to launch some others in the future.
Russia is also promoting cooperation with other countries on the continent. Russia's move is substantiated by the fact that Latin America is becoming a centre of fast economic growth in the world. Consequently, possibilities for the implementation of mutually beneficial projects are gaining momentum. Speaking at a news conference in Mexico, Sergei Lavrov drew the attention to this.
"Russia is promoting its relations with Latin America on the basis of pragmatic approach, mutual respect and coincidence of interests," Sergei Lavrov says. "A long time ago, Russia rejected ideology-based relations, and it believes that intergovernmental relations based on national interests are beneficial for all countries. As Latin America's economic growth gains momentum, there will be ample opportunities for the implementation of concrete economic, energy and infrastructure projects. In fact, many of these projects have either sub-regional or even regional significance. Clearly, cooperation will strengthen in the future. And Russia hopes to be involved in these processes actively, and will do this on the basis of competitive advantage," Sergei Lavrov said.
These advantages are obvious in such areas as scientific developments, high-tech and investment projects. At the same time, Russia maintains cooperation at the political, economic and bilateral levels and as part of cooperation between regional organizations. This is witnessed by the establishment of strategic partnership relations with the South American Common Market that embraces Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. At the same time, there is a fast growth in trade, military and economic cooperation with Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chili. A classic example in this case is Russia's contacts with Venezuela for which Russia has been a leading economic partner in the past years.
Cooperation with Russia is very important for the Latin American countries that are not the members of regional organizations since this helps them to integrate into the global economy and establish parity-based relations with powerful nations. In the end, all this helps them to strengthen their positions on the regional market and the world market as a whole.
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