New Delhi: Russian President Vladimir Putin underscored the growing economic partnership between India and Russia while addressing the India-Russia Business Forum in New Delhi on December 5, stressing that the engagement goes far beyond energy cooperation and is aimed at deepening “multifaceted relations” across sectors.
“The Russian delegation did not only come in order to discuss energy issues and sign contracts for the supplies of oil and gas. What we want is development of our multifaceted relations with India in various fields,” Putin said, adding that Russian businesses are eager to explore opportunities in India’s expanding economy. “We want to familiarise our economic operators with these opportunities so that both parties can satisfy the needs of each other,” he added.
Putin highlighted that India and Russia remain “longtime trade partners”, with bilateral trade witnessing unprecedented growth. “Trade volumes are growing at a sustainable pace and over the past three years we saw a record increase of up to 80 per cent. As a result, last year the Russian-Indian trade volume reached 64 billion dollar,” he said.
Pointing to the scale and potential of both economies, the Russian President said, “Russia and India have big consumer markets and an impressive economic, technological and resource potential.”
He also praised India’s economic performance under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Under the leadership of his Excellency Modi, India is conducting absolutely independent and sovereign policy and at the same time achieves very good results in the economic field,” Putin added.
Putin noted that India is now “one of the fastest growing in the world,” adding that the country’s GDP “has almost doubled” over the past decade and “in terms of purchasing power it increased by 2.5 times.”
Putin credited “sound economic policy” and “landmark initiatives by Prime Minister Modi as making India progress and strengthening India’s technological autonomy”.
“The Indian processing and light industry, IT sector and pharmaceuticals take leading positions in the world,” he said, adding that Russia is studying India’s experience “with interest” for its own national programmes on “import substitution and products with high value added”.
Reaffirming the bilateral goal set jointly with Prime Minister Modi, Putin said, “This comprehensive document aims at making sure that we can achieve the goal, Modi and I set for ourselves so that we can increase the trade volume by 2030 to $100 billion.”
He stressed that Russian companies are prepared “to manifold increase the purchase from India of a widest range of goods and services,” noting that the synergy between the two economies is “obvious.”
“So it would only be logical that projects contributing to greater supplies of Indian products to Russia receive priority attention in the implementation of the new export support program recently adopted by the government of Mr. Modi. Through my part, I would like to assure the business circles that all useful initiatives aimed at development of mutual economic exchanges will be further supported by Russian ministries and authorities,” he added.
Furthermore, he also advocated greater use of national currencies in bilateral trade. “Tangible advantages are offered by the use of national currencies. It makes it possible to ensure uninterrupted financial transactions regardless of external developments and obviously accessibility of transport and logistics communications plays an crucial role. A lot is already being done in this regard,” Putin said.
Putin added that modernisation of the Northern Sea Route is progressing to facilitate the movement of Indian goods to global markets.
“Implementation of the project to create the corridor so south north from Russia and Belarus to the Indian Ocean is ongoing and infrastructure modernization of the northern sea route is being modernized in order to use it for the supplies of Indian goods to the world markets,” he said. (With Inputs from ANI)
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