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The opening of Economic Forum devoted to the development of cooperation between Russia and Africa took place on October 23-24, 2019 in Sochi, as a part of Russia-Africa Summit. The Forum was attended by the Rosselkhoznadzor delegation including Vasily Lavrovsky, Advisor to the Director of the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance, Dmitry Lozovoy, Director of the FGBI “ARRIAH”, and Yulia Koroleva, Director of the National Centre for Grain Quality Assurance.

Heads of the States and governments as well as the representatives of the largest banks, leading corporations and other private business organizations of the African countries and the Russian Federation took part in the event. Plenary meeting was opened by the Summit co-chairs – Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Egiptian colleague Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The Rosselkhoznadzor representatives took part in the business agenda. In particular, there was a meeting between Dmitry Patrushev, the RF Minister of Agriculture, and Saad Dine El Otmani, the Prime Minister of Morocco, as well as negotiations between Sergey Levin, Oksana Luth, the Deputy Ministers of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, and the heads of the Agricultural Authorities of Ghana and Democratic Republic of the Kongo. The parties declared their readiness to develop relations in agriculture, food processing industry and food trade, and marked the necessity of close collaboration between the surveillance services to reduce unnecessary veterinary and phytosanitary barriers.

Vasily Lavrovsky took part in the Panel discussion on “Sustainable Partnership in Agricultural Sector: institutions, tools, guarantees”. During his speech he draw public attention to the first achievements in the joint work of the Russian and African SPS Services which allowed to export large amounts of wheat, fish, meat and poultry offal from Russia to African countries. Also, he highlighted that it was important to exchange agricultural quality requirements in due time and proposed to use direct supply routes and electronic certification. It was marked that Russia could significantly improve the situation regarding animal and plant disease spread in Africa thanks to the extensive experience and high qualification of specialist from the leading laboratories and the Scientific Reseacrh Institution subordinated to the Rosselkhoznadzor. Large quantities of vaccines produced by the FGBI “ARRIAH” have already been supplied to Egypt and Morocco, Arlgeria, a number of Maghreb countries and of “black” Africa are the next ones. Vasily Lavrovsky pointed out that the safety of Russian products is guaranteed thanks to the multi-level disease monitoring system, hazardous substance residues monitoring and transparent certification of animal products using the electronic information system “VETIS”.

According to the participants of the Forum, this historic event will contribute to strengthening cooperation between Russia and African countries and will help them to significantly increase the commodity turnover.

The press service of the FGBI "ARRIAH»