Diarytimes Media Network, Shimla Published by : Kumud Sharma, Updated April 17, 2023 by Diary Times
Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade, Denis Valentinovich Manturov, on Monday expressed his desire to boost trade with India to balance Russia’s ongoing trade deficit with India. “This is one of the issues which we have just discussed with your colleague, so due to lack of inputs from India, using rupee is not enough so we need to promote trade from India and then this In case we are looking at balance like this, for example, we have with China. We have USD 200 billion trade with China, and it is balanced,” Manturov said on the India-Russia trade and payments issue. .
India and Russia are discussing a free trade agreement, a move that would further deepen bilateral commercial ties that have flourished since the war broke out in Ukraine. In particular, Sino-Russian trade growth has increased the use of the Chinese renminbi. China’s total exports to Russia are set to increase to USD 76.12 billion in 2022, showing an increase of more than 12 percent from a year ago. Russia’s economy has been hit by Western sanctions due to its invasion of Ukraine, resulting in increased use of the yuan.
The change makes Russia a rare example of a country adopting the renminbi instead of the US dollar or euro as a reserve currency. Russian President Vladimir Putin supported wider international use of the renminbi in March. As he met Chinese President Xi Jinping, he said he “supported the use of the yuan in payments between Russia and countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America”, TASS reported.
Manturov is on a two-day visit to India to co-chair the Inter-Governmental Russian-Indian Commission, which aims to enhance trade ties between the two countries. On the first day of his visit, Manturov co-chaired the 24th India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC). The IRIGC-TEC is the primary institutional mechanism for monitoring economic cooperation. It integrates six working groups on Economic and Trade Cooperation, Modernization and Industrial Cooperation, Energy, Tourism and Culture, Science and Technology and IT.
The plenary meeting of the Inter-Governmental Commission (IGC) will be held on Tuesday, after which the co-chairs will sign the final protocol of the 24th IGC meeting. The two sides plan to discuss issues of bilateral trade, and economic and humanitarian cooperation. Manturov will also hold several bilateral meetings, the Russian Embassy in India said in a tweet. Several institutional mechanisms have been established for the development of economic cooperation between the two countries. The primary body at the government level is the IRIGC-TEC. Last month, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Manturov co-chaired a virtual meeting of the IRIGC-TEC.
