On Tuesday President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation Sergey Katyrin opened in New Delhi the office of the honorary representative of the Chamber in India.
In his welcoming speech at the opening ceremony, he stressed that the institute of representatives of the Chamber is an important element of the infrastructure for supporting international cooperation, which has been used by the Chamber for many years.
“In response to the request of our business, to the growing interest in India from the business community of Russia, it was decided to appoint an honorary representative in India, Igor Pyasetsky, who has extensive experience working in India as an entrepreneur and has been performing his duties since February 2023 ”, -said Katyrin.
According to the President of the Chamber, the growth of mutual interest of Russian and Indian entrepreneurs in the development of cooperation is largely facilitated by changes in the global foreign economic situation. “Trade in goods between our countries continues to maintain a positive trend, having exceeded the record figure of $35 billion in 2022 (an increase of 2.5 times compared to 2021),” Katyrin said.
According to him the main task is to use this historical “window of opportunity”, to create all the necessary conditions for realizing the existing potential of economic relations between Russia and India, not only in the short term, but also in the long term.
Katyrin expressed confidence that in the context of the current realities, trade and economic relations between the two countries can reach a new qualitative level of their development, and the regions of our country play an important role in the implementation of this task. “In general, the development of business relations with Indian entrepreneurs at the interregional level is an invariable priority of the chambers of the system,” the head of the Chamber emphasized.He drew attention to the fact that the leaders of the most active Russian chambers of commerce and industry on the foreign economic track are present today as part of the Russian delegation.
According to Katyrin, an important feature of cooperation is the high interest in developing business ties with India on the part of Russian small and medium-sized businesses. “This is of particular importance. It is on this segment that the stability of bilateral trade and economic cooperation and the prospects for its diversification largely depend. Therefore, it is no coincidence that our delegation includes mainly companies from this segment. More than 60 companies from 27 regions of Russia operating in various sectors of the economy: light industry, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, IT industry, engineering, automotive, innovative technologies. “In all these areas, we see good prerequisites for building up cooperation with Indian partners,” he stressed.
On Wednesday, Katyrin opened the Russian-Indian Business Forum, which is taking place in New Delhi.
Before the start of the forum, Sergey Katyrin met with Shalesh Patak, Secretary General of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), inviting him to pay a return visit to Moscow.
“The development of interregional cooperation is another important area of our work. At the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, we always place special emphasis on this vector. Russia is not only Moscow and St. Petersburg. Russia is Krasnoyarsk, Ural, Kuzbass, Tula, Lipetsk, Novgorod, Tyumen and many other industrial centers that are now interested in establishing contacts in India.”
Katyrin noted that the forum is being held on the eve of the next meeting of the Intergovernmental Russian-Indian Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technical and Cultural Cooperation (April 17-18, Delhi). “Without support from the governments of our countries, it is impossible to talk about the comprehensive implementation of the existing potential for cooperation, which we understand today in the new geopolitical conditions that have developed,” said the President of the Chamber.
Among the priority issues for which business expects support, Katyrin attributed the liberalization of the customs, tax, visa regime; creation of effective investment protection mechanisms; improving the efficiency of existing and developing new transport and logistics routes, developing air traffic, including with the regions of Russia; development and ensuring the availability of financial infrastructure; elimination of administrative barriers and other restrictions on the access of products to the markets of our countries.
Many of these issues could be resolved within the framework of preferential economic cooperation regimes, he said and welcomed the resumption of negotiations on the creation of a free trade zone between the Eurasian Economic Union and India.
The President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation expressed his hope that the results of the forum would make a practical contribution to the realization of the existing prospects. “I count on the effectiveness of the negotiations of entrepreneurs in the B2B format, which will be held in the second part of our forum,” said Sergey Katyrin.
The Indian business community was represented at the forum by over 300 entrepreneurs.