Russian President Vladimir Putin, addressing the India-Russia Business Forum in New Delhi on Friday, underlined the growing economic partnership between India and Russia, and emphasized that the engagement goes far beyond energy cooperation and aims to deepen “multidimensional ties” in various sectors.
Putin said, “The Russian delegation has come not just to discuss energy issues and sign contracts for the supply of oil and gas. We want to develop our multidimensional relations with India in various fields.” He further said that Russian companies are keen to take advantage of the opportunities in India’s growing economy. “We want to introduce these opportunities to our economic drivers so that both sides can meet each other’s needs,” he added.
Putin stressed that India and Russia remain “long-term trading partners” and bilateral trade is witnessing unprecedented growth. “Trade volumes have been growing at a steady pace and over the past three years we have seen a record growth of up to 80%. As a result, Russia-India trade volumes reached $64 billion last year,” he said.
Pointing to the scale and potential of both economies, the Russian President said, “Russia and India have large consumer markets and impressive economic, technological and resource potential.” He also praised India’s economic performance under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Under the leadership of His Excellency Modi, India is pursuing a completely independent and sovereign policy and is also achieving very good results in the economic sphere,” Putin said.
Putin said India is now “one of the fastest-growing countries in the world”, adding that the country’s GDP has “almost doubled” over the past decade and “in terms of purchasing power it has grown 2.5 times.” Putin credited “strong economic policy” and “Prime Minister Modi’s historic initiatives” for India’s progress and strengthening India’s technological autonomy.
“Indian processing and light industries, IT sector and pharmaceuticals hold world leadership positions,” he said. He further said that Russia is studying India’s experience “with interest” for its national programs on “import substitution and high value-added products”. Confirming the bilateral target jointly set with Prime Minister Modi, Putin said, “The purpose of this comprehensive document is to ensure that we achieve the goal that Mr. Modi and I have set for ourselves to increase trade volumes to $100 billion by 2030.”
He emphasized that Russian companies are ready to increase purchases of a wide range of goods and services from India manifold. He said that the synergy between the two economies is obvious. He further said, “It would therefore be logical that projects contributing to greater supply of Indian products to Russia be given priority in the implementation of the new export assistance program recently adopted by the Shri Modi Government. On my part, I would like to assure the business community that all useful initiatives aimed at the development of mutual economic exchanges will be further supported by the Russian ministries and authorities.”
Furthermore, he also advocated greater use of national currencies in bilateral trade. Putin said, “The use of national currencies brings concrete benefits. It makes it possible to ensure uninterrupted financial transactions regardless of external activities, and ease of transport and logistics communications plays an important role in this. A lot is already being done in this regard.”Putin said that modernization of the Northern Sea Route is in progress to facilitate the movement of Indian goods to global markets.
“The project to build a corridor in the South-North direction from Russia and Belarus to the Indian Ocean continues to be implemented and the infrastructure of the Northern Sea Route is being modernized so that it can be used to supply Indian goods to world markets,” he said.