The past seven months have seen a 60-percent increase in  car production in Russia – a sign that the sector shows stable signs of growing , Industry and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko has said.

As Vladivostok prepares to host the 2012 APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit, complex infrastructure is being built with an army of Caterpillar construction equipment.

Over the past year local Cat dealer Amur Machinery has sold 29 Cat machines and rented another ten to the contractor, ZAO Crocus. In February an order of seventeen machines were delivered to the customer consisting of four 428 E backhoe, seven bulldozers, including two D9R machines, three rollers and three tracked excavators CS56 in the 35-ton class.

Cat Financial provided the funding for this mix of construction equipment.

A Taiwan company has won a contract to design the world's largest aquarium in Russia's Vladivostok city, the company has announced. The Huangs Green Country Industrial Co Ltd won the bid on the project that is part of Vladivostok's preparation for hosting the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, it said.

Russia has had S-300 anti-aircraft missiles deployed in Abkhazia since its forces briefly invaded Georgia two years ago to protect two breakaway Georgian regions, a Kremlin source confirmed Friday.

"All of our partners were informed," the Kremlin official told the Interfax news agency.