Business, / By Sta

Moscow, 11.February - As part of an official visit by President Borut Pahor to Moscow, several Slovenian and Russian companies signed fourteen contracts worth more than 500 million euros. Most of the contracts are related to industry.

Civil engineering company Riko signed a contract to build two factories for wheat processing, which its boss Janez Škrabec said was worth more than EUR 100m.

One of the factories will be built in the Oryol region, Škrabec told the STA and said that several Slovenian companies could take part in the project.

Slovenian Agriculture Minister Dejan Židan is happy that Slovenian producers of food-processing equipment were gaining ground in Russia.

Speaking to the STA after the contracts were signed, he said fresh meetings would be held in the months to come to see if Slovenia could help Russia build its own food processing capacities.

"Russia has big plans and we can actually offer technology and equipment," he stressed.

Engineering firm Duol, meanwhile, sold its technology to build air greenhouses and the rights to sell them in Russia.

Director Dušan Olaj said "the idea is for us to build three factories in the Krasnodar region in 2-3 years where Russians would make the greenhouses".

What is more, Doul and the Russian partners would jointly enter third markets, notably Central Asia and Iran, he told the STA.

Contracts were signed also by producer of ovens for bakeries Gostol Gopan; telecommunications equipment provider Iskratel; industrial furnace manufacturer Bosio; maker of surge protection systems Iskra zaščite; company distributing multimedia content In net media; and company Tevel.

A contract was also signed by Slovenian postal company Pošta Slovenije and its Russian counterpart Russian Post, while the University of Ljubljana signed memorandums of understanding with Innopolis University and North Caucasus Federal University.

Before the signing ceremony, a Slovenian-Russian business conference was addressed by President Pahor.

Pahor stressed that Ljubljana-Moscow relations were currently burdened by poor EU/NATO-Russia relations, which Slovenia would like to overcome also because it would like to strengthen economic cooperation with Russia.

"Slovenia is recovering now, but due to the worsening of the relations we are witnessing a drop in trade in goods and services for the second time in a short period of time," he told the business executives.

He added that both him and President Vladimir Putin, whom he met earlier in the day, would like his visit to Moscow to give Slovenian and Russian businesses a fresh impetus as much as this is possible due to the limits Slovenia had as an EU member.

Foreign Minister Karl Erjavec, meanwhile, said that there was still a lot of untapped potential for economic cooperation.

Ways of improving air links were discussed by Infrastructure Minister Peter Gašperšič at the Russian Ministry of Transport.

The minister said that he would like Slovenia to have air links also with other parts of Russia than just Moscow.

He also discussed possible Russian investments in infrastructure, pointing to the Koper-Divača rail line, saying that also for Russia this was a very important corridor.