OREANDA-NEWS. The World Trade Center Moscow hosts the 2014 International Economic Forum of the CIS member states. The key topic selected for the forum is “The CIS and New Interaction Formats.” The key issues to be discussed at the Forum are promotion of economic collaboration of CIS countries, including implementation of the Free-Trade Treaty and the Interstate Program of Innovative Cooperation of CIS countries for the period of up to 2020, efficient development of the tourist industry in the Commonwealth, and new mechanism of promoting integration processes.

The Forum is attended by CEOs of state-owned corporations and of the largest businesses, leaders of professional industry associations and business partnerships, banks and insurance firms operating in the CIS, members of the CIS Economic Council. The list of dignitaries includes, among other VIPs, Sergei Lebedev, Chairman of the Executive Committee and Executive Secretary of the CIS; Andrei Vasilyev, Deputy Executive Secretary, UNECE; Andrei Kostin, President-Chairman of the Management Board, VTB Bank, and President of the Financial and Banking Council, CIS; Igor Finogenov, Chairman of the Board, Eurasian Bank of Development.

This year, the Forum takes place on the same day as the 61st meeting of the CIS Economic Council. The agenda of that meeting includes a large set of issues of interaction of CIS countries in the economic sphere. In particular, the discussion, among other topics, touched upon drafts of the Agreement on Information Interaction of CIS Countries in the Area of Transport Security, and of the Protocol on Amending the Agreement on Rules to Determine the Country of Origin of Goods in the Commonwealth of Independent States, dated November 20, 2009.

There are several sections at the Forum, namely:

“Development of the free-trade area. Interaction of integration formats”;

“Prospects of stable economic growth within the framework of Eurasian integration”;

“Mechanisms of carrying out innovative projects and protecting intellectual property”;

“2014, the tourism year in the CIS. Development of the tourist industry in the CIS”;

“Funding infrastructure projects in the Commonwealth space. Setting up a network of transport and logistics centers.”