To cut trade imbalance, Russia mulls importing 500 products from India

Sandeep Dikshit

New Delhi, April 18

Talks to sort out trade issues with Russia got into high gear on Tuesday with a discussion taking place on contentious issues, including imbalanced trade, kick-starting rupee-rouble trade in real earnest and the lack of access to Indian exports, especially of agricultural products.

India’s imports from Russia have more than quadrupled to $46.33 billion in 2022-23, mainly through oil. But the trade balance is heavily tilted in Russia’s favour.

At a meeting co-chaired by visiting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Moscow proposed importing almost 500 products from India as well as suggested joint manufacturing of items with soft loans from Russia under a “cluster investment platform” scheme.

Both sides also looked into the possibility of mutual investments to correct the trade imbalance. The visit by Manturov comes just a month after a virtual review meeting on trade issues between him and Jaishankar in Moscow. Besides being India’s top source of military hardware, Russia has now become the biggest supplier of oil.

Manturov also had a meeting with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to widen the use of the rupee for trade with Russia. He had on Monday met Commerce Minister Piyush Goel as well as National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, with whom he met earlier too over security issues.

Tilted towards Moscow

• India’s imports from Russia have more than quadrupled to $46.33 billion in 2022-23
• Though it’s mainly due to oil, the trade balance is heavily tilted in Russia’s favour
• Moscow proposes importing 500 products, extending soft loans for joint manufacturing