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Russian Deputy Minister for Economy calls for innovative business strategies to raise bilateral trade to US$ 30 billion by 2025
Mar 19, 2018
NEW DELHI, 19 March 2019: The Deputy Minister for Economic Development of Russia, Mr. Alexey Gruzdev, has called for innovative business strategies to raise Russia-India trade to US$ 30 billion by 2025 from the current level of $ 7.5 billion.
Mr. Gruzdev was speaking at an interactive meeting here today with Indian industry representatives organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
He said that a special group has been constituted within the Russia-India inter-governmental group to identify barriers to trade and investment between the two countries. He said removal of obstacles to trade would be given high priority by the two governments in order to improve upon the 21.5% growth in two-way trade recorded last year.
Mr. Gruzdev said that the Russian and Indian economies enjoy complementarities in several areas, including agriculture, machine building and energy sectors. "These are the areas that we will concentrate on this year" to give a fillip to bilateral trade and investment.
The Russian Minister made a special mention of supporting innovation-driven companies, especially start-ups which could act as a bridge between large Indian companies and foreign investors. SMEs from both countries could also play a critical role in this regard, he said.
Mr. Vinod Jacob, Joint Secretary, Economic Diplomacy Division, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, in his remarks, pointed out that the areas that needed to be addressed for giving an impetus to bilateral trade were connectivity, engagement between Russian regions and Indian states, collaboration in the energy sector, high-tech cooperation and cooperation in defence and security.
Mr. V. Makarov, President, RUSSOFT, presented ICT proposals of Russian companies for joint projects with India. These include design and manufacture of ICT hardware and software, deployment of data communication networks, creation of an automated multi-lingual translation system and a multi-modal biometric personal identification and authentication system.
Mr. Nand Khemka, Chairman, Sun Group, gave an Indian industry perspective on doing business with Russia. He said the government's 'Make in India' programme offered opportunities for diversifying trade with other countries and Russia should take advantage of this investment avenue. There were real opportunities, he added, in aerospace, helicopters and shipbuilding for civil and defence use.
Dr. Sanjaya Baru, Secretary General, FICCI, said that FICCI was committed to strengthening B2B relations between India and Russia. The meeting, he said, provided a real opportunity to take the two-way trade and investment relations forward.
Mr. G. V. Srinivas, Joint Secretary (ER), Minsitry of External Affairs, said that it was important to judge the strength of India-Russian business ties by the success stories of collaboration in sectors such as oil and gas. India-Russia B2B relations, he added, were poised to grow and deepen as the Indian government was committed to providing the required handholding to Russian companies through 'Invest India', a joint venture between the Central and state governments and FICCI.