Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Government Staff Sergei Sobyanin, during a working visit to the North-Western Federal District, took part in the 15^th session of the Russian-French Council for Economic, Financial, Industrial, and Trade Issues in St Petersburg.

Speaking at the Council's plenary session, Mr Sobyanin said that growth of mutual investments should be a priority for Russian-French cooperation. He said that bilateral economic cooperation was "developing dynamically".

Mr Sobyanin reminded the audience that Gazprom and Total had agreed to jointly develop the first phase of the Shtokman gas field. A number of large projects are being successfully implemented, including Superjet-100, cooperation in space, construction of the Peugeot-Citroen car factory in Kaluga Region, as well the strategic partnership between Renault and AvtoVAZ.   

Mr Sobyanin stressed that "despite the growing interest of French companies in the Russian market, there are still many outstanding issues, the most important of which was low investment volumes." He suggested that special attention should be paid to this issue.