In his address to the session Mr Zubkov urged the representatives of the Dutch business community to show more interest in investment projects together with the Russian side, including the Olympic projects. In Mr Zubkov's opinion, such cooperation opens up good prospects.

Mr Zubkov described the contacts between the two Governments as very fruitful, noting that mutual trade had increased by 1.5 times since the beginning of the year compared with the same period of last year. Trade in the first three quarters of 2008 amounted to $50.3 billion. "For the sake of comparison, he said, in 2003 the total volume of trade between our countries was $10 billion. It has been increasing by $10 billion a year."

At the same time, First Deputy Prime Minister said, trade has been mainly growing due to the increased supply of goods with low-added value. "Therefore I think that the potential of Russian exports to the Netherlands is not fully tapped and we intend to step up our work to increase the share of high-added value goods in the structure of Russian supplies to your country," Mr Zubkov said.