The purchase included some of the largest production facilities in Russia, all of which previously belonged to businessman Valery Yakovlev. The deal boosts Rosspirtprom domestic market share to 61 percent, Vedomosti reported.

Vadim Dobroz, the director of the Research Center for Federal and Regional Alcohol Markets, told Vedomosti that the purchases hinted again at possible state plans to create an alcohol monopoly. “In reality, there was only ever one buyer [for these factories],” he said. “In such a situation, any money is just a gift.”

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin announced last year that the monopoly on the sale of alcohol was “a very important policy” and one that the government should “pursue in the next year and put under control,” Vedomosti reported.

The two most expensive factories bought by Rosspirtprom were for Tula's Zernoprodukt and Kabardino-Balkaria's Premium, costing 1.12 billion rubles ($17 million) and 1.04 billion rubles ($16 million.) Other new acquisitions included factories in Kursk, Novosibirsk, and North Ossetia.

Domestic vodka production has recently surged by up percent as the government began cracking down on the production and sale of counterfeit alcohol in the past year. Foreign alcohol imports are also threatened by a shortage of mandatory, state-produced excise stamps.

“The volume of investments to the region has already reached 1.1 trillion rubles ($17.1 billion) as a result of new Far East development mechanisms, such as the Advanced Development Territories [ADT – Ed.], the Vladivostok free port area, the Far East Development Fund and targeted infrastructural project support. Those mechanisms are popular with Chinese businesses who had already invested 163 billion rubles ($2.4 billion),” Galushka said in a ministry statement.

According to the minister, Chinese firms have invested in a cement plant and plan investing in an oil refinery in the Amur Region, as well as working in the Sakha Republic and Primorsky Territory ADTs. The Chinese are key investors in the new Amuro-Khinganskaya ADT in the Jewish Autonomous Region, providing some 10 billion rubles ($157 million) in funds.

Over seven billion rubles ($109 million) has been invested in a timber plant in the Khabarovsk region. About ten projects worth 80 billion rubles ($1.2 billion) generated by a joint Russian-Chinese agro-industrial development fund are ready for investment, and will be presented at the Eastern Economic Forum in September, Galushka said.

An unnamed source at the Russian Far East Development Ministry told Sputnik news agency in May that more than 31 agreements had been signed with Chinese companies.

Russian and Chinese firms have a number of projects in Russia’s Far East in energy, trade and cross-border tourism. The biggest of them is the Power of Siberia pipeline which is to deliver 38 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas to China annually. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has described the pipeline the world’s biggest infrastructure project.

Cooperation in developing the sparsely populated but resource rich territory is one of the major points of interest between the two countries.

Japan has also expressed interest in developing Russia’s Far East. Tokyo is planning to create a $110 billion fund to bankroll infrastructure projects with some of the money invested in Russia's Pacific region.

The conclusion will be submitted to the Prime Minister, who is to confirm his candidature.

Ts.Sandui was elected the chairman of the Khural on the same day.

This is a record number of heads of state and government Mongolia has ever hosted. Other member countries are represented by foreign ministers and special delegates. On July 12-14, 4-5 presidents and premiers are to pay official visits to Mongolia.

The summit, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the Asia-Europe Meeting itself, is themed “Partnership for the Future through Connectivity”.

Out of nine side events anticipating the summit, four events were complete with ongoing fifth event – the 7th Asia-Europe People’s Forum. The next side events are the Asia-Europe Editors’ Forum and the Model ASEM (Youth Forum), to reside between July 7 and 10, and ASEM Senior Officials' Meeting (SOM) and 15th Asia-Europe Business Forum (AEBF15), to take place between July 12 and 14.

The recovery is helpful to Indian steel companies burdened with high debt and low margins.

Indian operations of Tata Steel, which is divesting itself of money-losing operations in the U.K., recorded 8% growth in crude steel production to 2.5 million tons for the April-June quarter, with sales up 6% at 2.35 million tons. Automotive steel production hit a record 379,000 tons, the company said.

Integrated steel producer Essar Steel India reported 48% growth in flat-steel production in the first quarter at 1.22 million tons, compared with 824,000 tons in the same period last year. Pellet production grew 58%, from 1.28 million tons to 2.02 million tons.

Essar Steel believes that the upturn since March is due to minimum import pricing introduced for steel in February and quality controls applied by the Bureau of Indian Standards.

The improved volumes pushed Essar's operating margin to around 20% from 5%, which translates to an improvement of 6,000 rupees to 7,000 rupees per ton. "Following these measures by the Government of India, Chinese imports of steel at predatory prices [have] been contained, leading to better sales realization in the Indian market," Essar said.

JSW Steel has not yet released June production figures but registered 16% growth in crude steel output to 1.35 million tons in May. Demand for flat and long products grew 7% and 22% on the year.

Indian steelmakers had been lobbying against cheap imports, particularly from economically ailing China. India's iron and steel industry owes an estimated 3 trillion rupees ($44.4 billion) to banks. Tata Steel alone carries $12 billion in debt as a result of its outright purchase in 2007 of all of Corus Group's steel operations in Europe, the global economic slowdown, and cheap steel imports in Europe, particularly from China.

In February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government imposed minimum import prices ranging from $341 to $752 per ton for 173 types of steel. There is talk of extending them beyond August, when they are due to expire.

Other anti-dumping measures were imposed last year to regulate imports from such countries as China, South Korea and Japan. India's inbound steel shipments fell 34.2% to 654,000 tons in April from 994,000 tons in March, according to the latest official data. Steel imports rose 29% in the nine months ended December, which preceded the curbs.