Alaska, Russia Successfully Cooperating In Export Of Services - World Trade Center Alaska

Rukhshan Mir (@rukhshanmir) Published August 27, 2018 | 02:12 PM

The US State of Alaska and Russia are developing a successful cooperation in the export of services, including engineering, construction and logistics, Greg Wolf, the executive director of the World Trade Center of Alaska, said in an interview with Sputnik.

ANCHORAGE (Alaska) (UrduPoint news / Sputnik - 27th August, 2018) The US State of Alaska and Russia are developing a successful cooperation in the export of services, including engineering, construction and logistics, Greg Wolf, the executive director of the World Trade Center of Alaska, said in an interview with Sputnik.

"Where we have had success between Alaska and Russia, especially the Russian Far East, is in the export of services - technical and professional services like engineering, like construction, like design, like oil and gas field services, logistics, mining consulting," Wolf said.

He added, however, that, according to trade statistics, Alaska "does not do very much actual trade" with Russia.

"One of the reasons for that is that ... we are a natural resource exporting state, and Russia is also a natural resource exporting state. They export gold and we export gold, they export oil, we export oil," Wolf noted.

Wolf's interview comes following an annual session of the Russian American Pacific Partnership (RAPP), hosted by the city of Anchorage in July and attended by officials and representatives of businesses and NGOs from both Russia and the United States.

"In addition to working on joint venture projects and being contractors providing technical and professional services, tourism has some great potential ... We do have direct service from Anchorage to Petropavlovsk, to Kamchatka, weekly service during the summers. Yakutia is providing that service. So that's giving a convenient way for Alaskans and Americans to visit not only the Russian Far East but they have connecting flights elsewhere to Russia and to Japan," Wolf stressed.

According to Wolf, sanctions and tariffs "come and go" but businesspeople have to "keep working."