ASHGABAT, October 8 (RIA Novosti) - Trade between Russian and the Central Asian Republic of Turkmenistan has reached around $4 billion in the past 18 months, a senior Russian official said on Wednesday.

"Of course, fuel and energy structures remain a key sphere of our cooperation but Russia increasingly supplies tools, construction equipment and cars to Turkmenistan," Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Russian president administration, said at a meeting with Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov.

Naryshkin said that bilateral trade in the first half of 2008 equaled the entire trade volume between the two countries in 2007.

Naryshkin also said that Turkmenistan has also taken an active part lately in other inter-state projects carried out with the assistance of the Council for Humanitarian Cooperation of the CIS countries - a loose association of former Soviet republics, excluding the Baltic States.