Moscow has been strengthening economic cooperation with the East mostly due to Western sanctions

Russia’s economic cooperation with Asian countries has continued to grow in tandem with a decline in trade with the European Union, the acting head of Russia’s Federal Customs Service (FCS) Ruslan Davydov has said.

Addressing the plenary session of the International Customs Forum in Moscow on Tuesday, Davydov noted that trade with China and India was growing at a fast pace, while turnover with Latin American countries was also on the rise.

The FCS has been seeking to streamline customs procedures to speed up the delivery of goods and facilitate further growth in trade with its partners.

“If in pre-crisis, pre-Covid times, the share of European Union countries in our trade was 50% or more, now this share has decreased to 16%, and the share of Asian countries, as we see here, has grown to almost 70% and continues to grow,” the customs chief stated.

Davydov had earlier reported that Moscow’s economic cooperation with almost all of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was expanding, with the CIS now accounting for 14% of Russian foreign trade. Statistics also showed that trade with the Eurasian Economic Union member-states was also on the rise, expected to hit $100 billion this year.

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