Yana Krimpe: "Relations between Azerbaijan and Estonia are developing on the basis of trust and strategic partnership, mutual respect of sovereignty"

President of Estonia will visit Azerbaijan soon - from 12 until 15 of January, said chairman of the trade chamber Estonia-Azerbaijan Yana Krimple, speaking about the development of relations between the two countries.

According to her, they have been waiting for this visit for long and she voiced satisfaction that this event will occur soon.

"I would like to note that we open the new year in the sphere of international relations by the visit to a friendly country Azerbaijan. This will be the first visit of the Estonian president to Azerbaijan, but for Toomas Hendrik Ilves it will be the first visit on the post of the head of the state, as in 2000 he visited Baku as a Foreign Minister and therefore, he is closely familiar with Azerbaijan. I think, during the upcoming visit he will have time to assess the progress, attained by the country through these years.

She stressed the good dynamics of relations between the two countries through the past years. According to her, many bilateral meetings have been held.

"I think this high level meeting is timely. Moreover, we have definite purposes, have developed plans on cooperation in different spheres. I particular, I would like to remind that Estonia took an active part in the international exhibition BakuTel 2008 in November of this year in Baku. During this ecent several projects on bilateral cooperation in the ICT sphere were adopted. Notably, the president of our country declared the year of 2009 the innovative year: year of new ideas, creative though and the first country where we would like to present our innovations is Azerbaijan and therefore this time the Estonian President will arrive in Azerbaijan with a delegation of businessmen, representing only the ICT sphere. This will be a specialized visit in the framework of which an intergovernmental forum on IC to be opened by the presidents and the ministers of the two countries will be held under support of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies. I think this proves once again the special interest of the President of Estonia in the development of bilateral relations in the ICT sphere. We have sent our X-road project to the Azerbaijani government. We hope that the project on the creation of the e-government will be implemented and Estonia is ready to share its experience in this sphere", said Krimpe.

She said along with the forum there will be organized a number of working meetings between the leading companies of Azerbaijan and Estonia during which they will discuss definite plans of cooperation. Moreover, meetings will also be held with the representatives of Azerbaijani government and businessmen will be able to familiarize with the investment climate of the country.

According to her several documents on the bilateral cooperation including agreement on mutual protection and encouragement of investments and agreement on cooperation in the ICT sphere, which I hope will be signed soon. She stressed with satisfaction that the agreement on double taxing evasion came into effect on January 1.

According to Krimpe, the volume of Estonian investments in Azerbaijani economy grew ten times in 2008.

"This is a great progress and the tendency of the relations development is obvious. Moreover, the fact that the Estonian President will come to Baku with the Minister of Economy and Communications of our country proves the seriousness of intentions in the development of relations. This process the interest of the Estonian enterprises into investments into Azerbaijan economy despite the global economic crisis. We would also like to see the Azerbaijani investments to Estonian economy.

She noted that this visit is expected to become another important contribution to the development of our intergovernmental relations.

/Day.Az/