KUALA LUMPUR. April 9 (Interfax-AVN) - Members of the Russian governmental delegation will hold several meetings with Malaysian leadership and industrialists in the course of the DSA 2002 international arms show, Russian Conventional Arms Agency Director General Alexander Nozdrachev told Interfax-Military News Agency on Tuesday.
On Wednesday the delegation will meet Malaysian Minister of Primary Industries Lim Keng Yaik and leaders of several large companies operating in the high-tech sphere. The meetings will happen "under the auspices of the visit of Russian Minister of Industry, Science and Technologies Ilya Klebanov to Malaysia in the context of implementation of agreements reached during the recent visit of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohammad," Nozdrachev said.
He stressed that Russian and Malaysian interests go hand in glove. "We need not only to buy and sell but also attempt to hand what we have among promising technologies, organize workplaces on the basis of our developments including possibly in Malaysia," Nozdrachev stressed.
According to specialists, Malaysia is an intensively developing industrial country which GDP amounts to more than eight percent in the past decade. The specific weight of the industry in GDP is over 40 percent while the share of reprocessing spheres is 34.5 percent and extracting ones is 7.1 percent.
Nozdrachev said that Malaysia has a considerably well- developed defense industry. Local enterprises produce small naval and river vessels, light weight trainers, provide technical servicing and repairs to vessels and aircraft, produce artillery and light small-arms, ammo to them, naval mines, hand grenades, explosives, tactical communication means, etc.
Strategically profitable geographical position enables Malaysia to consider it an ideal place for the construction of a space port and turning the country into a regional center of aerospace industry by 2015, the specialists say.
Under the auspices of unofficial unification of companies which produce special materiel there was established the Malaysian Defense Industry Council which coordinates the activities of production enterprises together with the Ministries of Defense and Finance.
When signing contracts on the supplies of special materiel including main conditions of agreements the country demonstrates offset programs, programs of industrial cooperation, establishment of joint ventures of repairing, technical servicing and production of several types of spare parts, components, etc.