Russia expects to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2011, presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich said on Wednesday.
"We expect that a report of the working group, the key document to join the WTO, will be ready at the beginning of next year and the accession process will be completed in 2011," Dvorkovich told Russia Today international news TV channel in an interview.
Russia, the only major economy outside the global trade body, has been negotiating WTO membership for 17 years compared with an average accession period of five to seven years.
In June 2009, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus notified the WTO of their intention to join the world trade club as a customs union. Four months later, the three former Soviet republics announced they would resume talks on WTO accession separately, but from synchronized positions.
In October 2010, Lawrence H. Summers, an economic adviser to U.S. President Barak Obama, said Russia's accession to the WTO might be completed within a year. Moscow's chief WTO negotiator Maxim Medvedkov said the forecast by Summers that Russia may join the WTO within the next 12 months was realistic.
MOSCOW, November 10 (RIA Novosti)
