During his Moscow visit, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar floated measures to further enhance the trade relationship between India and Russia and resolve the $58.9 billion trade deficit that has emerged as a result of increased Indian imports of oil from Russia. The minister stressed the imperative to resolve this trade gap.
Before Jaishankar's meeting on Thursday with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, Russia released a statement emphasizing that the talks would revolve around increasing transport, logistics, banking, and financial networks regardless of nations imposing sanctions, as well as broadening the utilization of national currencies in bilateral settlements.
Jaishankar advocated a set of steps to increase diversification of trade and redress the balance, involving addressing tariff and non-tariff trade barriers, eliminating logistical bottlenecks, improving connectivity, simplifying payment mechanisms, and taking the India-Eurasian Economic Union Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to an early conclusion, whose terms of reference were settled on Wednesday.
"They will not just contribute to balancing and increasing our trade, but also speed up achieving our renewed trade target of $100 billion by 2030," Jaishankar stated while co-chairing the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission for Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC) with Russia's first deputy PM Denis Manturov.
The minister emphasized the need for development of connectivity through the International North-South Transport Corridor, the Northern Sea Route, and the Chennai-Vladivostok Corridor. He urged the finalization and implementation of the Programme of Economic Cooperation up to 2030 within time.
On Thursday, Jaishankar will have a dialogue with Lavrov, where regional and global problems, including the most recent Russia-Ukraine conflict developments, will be on the agenda. Lavrov will bring information on the Russia-US summit in Alaska.
Before the talks, the Russian foreign ministry emphasized that the Russian-Indian "special privileged strategic partnership" rests on mutual respect and trust. "It is planned to touch upon the issues of enhancing cooperation in the transport, energy, agricultural and scientific-technical spheres," the statement added.
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