“Trade turnover between Russia & India exceeded 35 bn USD,” stated Russian Deputy PM & Minister of Industry & Trade, Co-Chairman of Indo-Russian Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technical & Cultural Cooperation during his meeting with Jaishankar here on Tuesday. According to Jaishankar for the period April, 2022 – February, 2023, the trade is actually about USD 45 billion and the expectation is that this will continue to grow.
During the meeting the two sides discussed cooperation in the areas of trade, finance, industry, energy sector, including nuclear power, agriculture, transport, healthcare, education & culture.
Manturov also met Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman whom he knows since her days as Defence and Commerce Minister. The Russian Deputy PM also met Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and the two focussed on collaboration in shipbuilding, metallurgy and railways. Russia is assisting India to create 120 Bande Bharat trains.
Earlier on Monday Manturov and Jaishankar met with representatives of the Russian and Indian businesses at a closed door business Forum.
The business forum participants had discussed issues of further enhancement of the Russian-Indian practical cooperation, including within the Intergovernmental Commission (IGC).
He also spoke about the measures taken to strengthen Russia’s technological sovereignty.Indian business representatives got acquainted with a new measure of support — a cluster investment platform, which can be applied in joint projects. It provides soft loans for the development and manufacturing of priority products, subsidies for pilot batches, preferences for insurance premiums and income tax.
Manturov noted that there is no goal to completely replace everything. “We will rely on trusted foreign partners. We will make every effort to expand our cooperation ties. To exchange competence and experience in the most promising technological areas,” he stressed.
During the Forum on Monday, Jaishankar noted, “I would like our Russian friends to appreciate that you can see there are big changes which are going on. There is a “Make in India” initiative which is aimed at promoting greater manufacturing capacities. And we are determined to make India a major global manufacturing hub. …And I think it should be of interest definitely to our Russian friends,” Jaishankar said, adding, “I also want to specially emphasize the opportunities for joint projects in the “Make in India – Make for the World” format. And Russia is known for its technology strengths; and India today is focussing on production scaling and product distribution. So, even our traditional areas infact could benefit from this, but clearly there are third country market implications here, which our companies should be looking at.”
He went on to add, “Our partnership today is a subject of attention and comment, not because it has changed, but because it has not. Indeed, it has been among the steadiest of the major relationships of the world in the contemporary era. But that by itself is not enough. We share a commitment to a multi-polar world. And that also means a multi-polar Asia. Russia is today looking much more towards Asia, a reassessment from its traditional focus. For India, this could mean a broadening out of our engagement that was overly reliant on the triad of military, nuclear and space cooperation. For Russia also, it presents a broader set of options.”