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.
