MOSCOW, March 13. /TASS/: Qatar will take part in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) scheduled for 2021 as a guest country, the event’s organizer, the Roscongress Foundation, said on Friday.
"Qatar will be a guest country of SPIEF in 2021. Moreover, the effort that we have launched on arranging the forum continues and we will use the opportunity to prepare our joint program in detail," Roscongress said, citing Qatar’s ambassador to Russia Fahad bin Mohammed Al-Attiyah.
Adviser to Russian President, Executive Secretary of the SPIEF Organizing Committee Anton Kobyakov noted that Russia and Qatar would focus efforts on boosting bilateral cooperation. "We will show solid partnership relations at the 2021 SPIEF," he stressed.
On March 5, the organizing committee decided against holding the forum in 2020 amid the novel coronavirus outbreak.
This year, SPIEF was supposed to take place June 3-6 in St. Petersburg. A panel discussion "New coronavirus - old challenges: how to reduce the economic consequences of epidemics?" was on the agenda. The organizers planned to invite heads of international and Russian organizations in the field of healthcare, representatives of the science community and international business to the discussion.
The outbreak of a disease caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was registered in central China in late December 2019. The World Health Organization recognized the situation with the novel coronavirus as a pandemic on March 11. Outside China, the worst affected countries are Italy, South Korea and Iran. Overall, more than 120 countries and territories, including Russia, have reported confirmed coronavirus cases. The WHO says that the novel coronavirus cases globally have exceeded 125,000, with 4,613 deaths (3,173 in China). A total of 34 cases have been registered in Russia.
