The meeting took place on the sidelines of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council meeting.
Mikhail Mishustin meets with Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers and Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office of the Kyrgyz Republic Akylbek Japarov
Excerpts from the transcript:
Mikhail Mishustin: Good afternoon, Mr Japarov. We spoke by telephone not long ago and discussed in detail our mutual agenda. We also covered the EAEU agenda. We are now holding an in-person meeting here in Yerevan. Taking this opportunity, I would like you to convey greetings and best wishes to President Sadyr Japarov from President Vladimir Putin and, of course, from me personally.
We value our friendship and partnership and our fraternal relations with Kyrgyzstan. We are sincerely interested in the progressive development of our cooperation across all areas. We hope that under your leadership, the government and the Executive Office of the President of Kyrgyzstan will ensure continuity in developing our multifaceted relations and continue to ensure the observance of the rights and legitimate interests of investors, including Russian investors, and to preserve respectful attitude to the use of the Russian language, which has official status in Kyrgyzstan. Parliamentary elections will be held in Kyrgyzstan on 28 November. We will do our best to assist in setting up polling stations for Kyrgyz citizens residing in the Russian Federation.
Importantly, the electoral process must comply with constitutional standards and contribute to strengthening state institutions in Kyrgyzstan and help maintain peace and stability in the republic.
On a separate note, I would like to mention our cooperation in fighting the coronavirus infection. In particular, the Russian Government’s emergency response headquarters adopted a decision to resume, on a reciprocal basis, regular air traffic with Kyrgyzstan starting from 1 December. This includes the Zhukovsky-Bishkek and Zhukovsky-Osh routes. In addition, flights from Russia to Issyk-Kul will resume soon. In pursuance of the Government instruction, the Russian Emergencies Ministry delivered 200,000 Russian Sputnik Light vaccine doses to Kyrgyzstan as humanitarian aid on 12 November. Now, the most important thing is to expedite the mass vaccination process. We are very energetically dealing with this issue in Russia. This is the only way to stop the pandemic and save lives.
With regard to trade and economic cooperation, we are pleased that we managed to resume growth in mutual trade during this period: in January-September, it increased by almost 38 percent to over $1.7 billion compared to the same period in 2020.
Of course, our goal is to create conditions for achieving long-term strategic goals in the economic sphere, to ensure the proper investment and business climate so that more Russian companies can work and invest in Kyrgyzstan. The joint Russian-Kyrgyz intergovernmental commission will be addressing these matters. Alexei Overchuk and your colleague co-chair this commission and communicate regularly.
I would also like to note the effective activities of the Russian-Kyrgyz Development Fund with its almost 1,400 projects. New proposals from our Kyrgyz partners are being worked through in order to pick the most effective and competitive investment projects.
Humanitarian interaction, including in education, is an important area of our cooperation. We are successfully implementing a project where we send Russian teachers to schools in Kyrgyzstan and cover numerous other aspects of our cultural interaction.
I’m ready to discuss pressing issues and turn it over to you, Mr Japarov.
Mikhail Mishustin meets with Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers and Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office of the Kyrgyz Republic Akylbek Japarov
Akylbek Japarov: Mr Mishustin, allow me to extend my warmest greetings. I am delighted to meet with you in person.
Thank you very much for your kind words. I fully support your assessment of the state of bilateral relations between our countries. Of course, I will be happy to pass along your greetings to our President, Sadyr Japarov.
We are pleased that our strategic partnership is growing consistently and fruitfully, and our diverse ties are expanding. You have already mentioned the economic indicators.
Once again, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to meet with you personally. Alexei Overchuk and I have already discussed at length the matters that could be settled at the level of prime ministers. We were looking forward to seeing you in Bishkek. I hope that as soon as the situation permits (I was glad to hear that regular flights will resume on 1 December), you will be able to visit our country. And we will be able to open many planned events with your personal involvement, and give a new impetus to our relationship.
I should say at the outset that all the issues we had with the modernisation of the Russian-Kyrgyz Development Fund, which we touched upon with Alexei Overchuk, have been settled. I hope this fund will work even better in the future and will contribute to expanding trade between our two countries.
I would like to introduce Arzybek Kozhoshev, my first deputy. He will work with Alexei Overchuk. He worked in the Finance Ministry with me for a long time, then he headed the Ministry of the Economy and the State Agency for Financial Oversight. I hope that working together, they will be able to resolve the tasks you have just set, and in the future, we will formulate them together with you.
Thank you very much for 200,000 doses of the Sputnik Light vaccines that Russia has just supplied. We will continue working in this area without stopping. We expect a third wave to hit our country after the parliamentary elections.
Our parliamentary elections are taking place in a very calm atmosphere because President Sadyr Japarov decided that the authorities would only organise elections without taking part directly in these political battles. As Prime Minister and Head of the Presidential Executive Office, I am doing all I can to ensure equal conditions for everyone and not to politicise the situation. I hope EAEU and CIS observers will be able to confirm this on 28 November and that we will be able to hold these elections normally and as planned. We are working to this end now.
Using this opportunity, I would like to repeat the request I made over the telephone. When assuming the office of Prime Minister, I declared, with the President’s consent, that we would renounce the syndrome of a poor country and would use all our potential for improving the wellbeing of our people.
First of all, this concerns fiscalisation, of course. We are very grateful for your help in this area. The Tax Service Director is here with me. He has already spoken by telephone with his Russian counterpart. I would like to ask again for your assistance in allocating 30,000 new generation cash registers. We are buying 19,000 cash registers and have already received 1,000 of them from Russia. By the end of the year, we would like to have 50,000 cash registers with fiscal data operators. We are already using more than 16,000 of them. I think next year digitisation and fiscalisation will help us double our revenues. At any rate, the President has set this goal for our Government.
