Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said Finland's direct investment in the Russian forestry amounts to 211 million dollars. "This indicator does not conform by far to the potential of our partnership," Fradkov stated at a Russian-Finnish forestry summit which opened here on Tuesday.

In his view, Russian-Finnish cooperation should evolve from traditional trade to deeper relations on the basis of operation of their joint ventures.

He expressed dissatisfaction over the fact that Finnish companies working in Russia are still oriented toward setting up production with a low degree of processing, whereas the objective is to restructure firms for value-added processing, yielding such products as cellulose, packing board and high quality paper.

Summing up his participation in the forestry summit, Fradkov noted that the acquisition of newest Finnish technologies and the setting up of joint ventures may prove to be other effective factors in the Finnish-Russian cooperation in the immediate future, in addtion to the exports of unsawn timber from Russia.

Both Finland, and Russia have opportunities for this, Fradkov noted.

The Russian budget will have a special item envisioning investment in the development of transport infrastructure and the construction of the so-called timber roads, he noted.

At the same time, he emphasized that the government would be creating favorable conditions for the operation of Russian and Finnish companies, so that it "could be possible to invest money in this promising branch."

A new draft Forestry Code will be submitted to the State Duma lower house of the Russian parliament in the nearest future, according to the Russian prime minister.