Meeting with President of Mozambique Filipe Jacinto Nyusi

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, friends,

Welcome to St Petersburg. I want to start by saying a few well-known facts that are nevertheless very important. Russia and Mozambique are bound by strong links of friendship and cooperation that took shape during the times when the people of Mozambique fought for their independence. We established our diplomatic relations in 1975.

Mr President, we value and share your ambition to strengthen the multidimensional ties between our nations.

Russia and Mozambique are advancing their political dialogue. Last May, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is sitting to my right, visited Maputo, and in July, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev also visited your capital.

The Russian and Mozambican parliaments maintain active contacts and exchange visits. Our legislative bodies founded friendship groups. The All-Russian political party United Russia and the Mozambique Liberation Front, the party that you lead, have also established links.

The trade between our countries grew by 14.5 percent in 2022. In January-April 2023, the positive dynamics persisted, with 35-percent growth. We have noted good prospects in gas production, geological exploration, electricity generation, agriculture and fishing.

The Intergovernmental Commission on Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation is focused on strengthening trade and economic relations. We are expanding the legal framework of our bilateral cooperation. Documents on intellectual property, geological projects, fishing and innovation will be signed on the sidelines of this summit.

We continue to assist Mozambique with training qualified personnel at Russian higher education institutions. About 3,000 Mozambicans have graduated from Soviet and Russian universities. Since 2020, we have more than doubled the quota for tuition-free study of Mozambican citizens in Russia. In the 2023‒2024 academic year, we will allocate 75 scholarships.

To be continued.