Russia and India hold talks on strategic cooperation
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has met with Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov in New Delhi ahead of extended bilateral talks between the two countries on trade and economic ties, energy, connectivity and other issues.
Modi welcomed the “sustained and joint efforts” being made by both sides to ensure the practical implementation of the decisions he had made with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their bilateral summit in Moscow in July, his office said in a press release.
Manturov and Indian Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar are heading an annual intergovernmental commission on trade-and-economic, scientific-and-technical and cultural cooperation (IRIGC-TEC) which has met every year since early the 1990s to monitor bilateral trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.
The commission is meeting on Tuesday; later on, Manturov will be having separate interactions with Jaishankar and other ministers of the Modi government.
Glad to meet Russia’s First Deputy PM Denis Manturov today. Happy to see that teams on both sides are working together to implement decisions taken during my recent visits and meetings with President Putin to further strengthen India-Russia Special and Privileged Strategic… pic.twitter.com/CvMlc22iAx
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 11, 2024
Since 2022, the two countries have significantly strengthened ties, with Moscow becoming New Delhi’s main energy supplier. Currently, imports of crude oil from Russia account for nearly 40% of India’s total oil purchases, a substantial increase from less than 1% prior to the Western sanctions which followed the escalation of the Ukraine conflict.
Bilateral trade between India and Russia reached a record figure of $66 billion in 2023. During their meeting in Moscow earlier this year, Putin and Modi set a target of $100 billion by 2030. Speaking at the IRIGC-TEC meeting on Tuesday Jaishankar expressed confidence that the target will be achieved ahead of 2030.
Both he and his Russian counterpart Denis Manturov stressed the importance of diversifying the structure of bilateral trade, which currently lacks equilibrium. According to Indian government data, India’s exports to Russia totaled under $5 billion last year.
“We must not only balance commodity flows but also enhance the share of non-resource, high-tech products. Two like-minded national initiatives are establishing conditions for this: Russia’s push for technological sovereignty and the Make in India program,” Manturov noted while speaking at an Indo-Russian business forum in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, on Monday.
