On February 6, a working meeting of the leadership of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry, with representatives of the Russian-German Chamber of Commerce was held, dedicated to the development of close working association between the two organizations.
The Russian-German Chamber of Commerce (AHK) represents the interests of German companies in Russia and provides support to Russian enterprises in gaining cooperation of German companies, both in Russia and in Germany. The Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in turn, performs a huge amount of diverse work, aimed at enhancing foreign trade relations for the metropolitan business community. The meeting of the parties, mutually interested in the development of economic contacts between the businessmen of the two countries was of particular relevance in the context of the current sanctions, which complicate the foreign economic partnership between Russia and Germany for a number of industries.
The President of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Vladimir Platonov, said that the Moscow Chamber of Commerce is interested in maximizing the involvement of businessmen in cooperative interaction between the two Chambers. The Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry is generating projects based on initiatives originating from Moscow entrepreneurs, and the scope of shared involvement is large enough to provide the basis for joint involvement for both Russia and Germany. Great prospects exist for direct, bilateral collaboration of professional guilds, representing industry communities on both sides.
The primary areas of possible interaction became apparent at the start of the working meeting. The Head of the Guild of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Digital Economy and Blockchain Technologies, Mr. Yevgeny Kontsevich, told the German colleagues about the prospects for work in the areas of development of innovative solutions in the fields of logistics, trade digitalization, cyber security, the health and wellness industry, etc.
In his turn, Mr. Dmitriy Kononenko, the Director of the Department of AHK for Digitalization and Future Technologies, spoke about the work being carried out by his Chamber to implement digitalization in the sphere of general applications, its role in applying compliance training methods and the industrial use of blockchain within the framework of Industry 4.0 open platform, i.e. (cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things, cloud and cognitive computing).
The colleagues decided to start preparations for the joint meeting of the MCCI Guild and the AHK Committee on Digital Technologies on issues of digital economy and blockchain technologies.
The MCCI’s digital project, the international online business platform “Business Market”, which is rapidly gaining popularity and is currently aggregating offers from the business communities of nineteen Russian regions and five countries, aroused great interest among the representatives of the AHK. The meeting’s participants agreed that this project would be extremely useful in expanding the development of relations between Russia and Germany.
The representatives of the two Chambers identified priority areas for joint work — digital economy, cyber security, blockchain, compliance, customs’ regulations, financial administration and taxation in the two countries, etc. On all these topics, combined events will be held both at the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry and in Germany.