23.02.09

The Russian-US trade turnover grew 35.3 percent in 2008 to $36.11 billion, the Russian trade mission in Washington told Tass on Thursday citing US Energy Department statistics.

US exports to Russia exceeded $9.3 billion, while imports were close to 26.8 billion dollars. Russia's balance of trade surplus was 17.4 billion dollars in the black.

As for concrete commodities, the United States nearly doubled the imports of minerals, while imports of fuel and chemicals upped over 1.5-fold. Purchases of Russian metals remained unchanged, while food imports trimmed.

US food exports to Russia upped from 1.2 to 1.7 billion dollars. Machinery and equipment exports increased from 4.4 to 5.4 billion dollars, chemicals from $574 to $781 million, metals from $245 to $409 million, minerals from $126 to $226 million.

Experts of the Russian trade mission warned the positive trends will hardly be preserved this year because of the global economic crisis. They said the growth in Russian-US bilateral trade turnover began to considerably decline already in the final months of 2008.

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Source: Itar-Tass