OREANDA-NEWS. A Finnish-Russian forest summit will be held in St. Petersburg on Sunday 25 October. Prime ministers Vladimir Putin and Matti Vanhanen will open the event, as Papernet reported.

Topics debated at the summit will include investments and innovation, the forestry and forest resources as well as the development of competence within the forest cluster. The Finnish delegation will include key government ministers as well as executives of forest industry companies.

The forest industry of Finland has played a substantial role in developing the forest sector of Northwest Russia especially. Finnish forest industry corporations have invested about Euro 1 billion into Russia, and during the last 15 years, Russia has received some Euro 7 billion from its timber exports to Finland.

Russia’s forest resources are the world’s largest at about 800 million hectares (Finnish forest resources: 22 million hectares).