Russian Deputy PM remarks on trade imbalance, “We need to boost trade from India”

Russia has indicated that it would like to exponentially increase the trade with India in a bid to balance its merchandise trade deficit. The Deputy Prime Minister of Russia and Minister of Industry and Trade, Denis Valentinovich Manturov, on Monday expressed that his country needs to boost trade with India.

“That’s one of the issues which we just discussed with your colleague, so because of lack of input from India, it’s not enough to use the Rupee so we need to boost the trade from India and then in this case we are looking at balance like for example, we have with China. We have USD 200 billion trade with China, and it’s balanced,” said Manturov on matters of payments and trade between Russia and India.

Free trade talks between India and Russia would strengthen their already strong bilateral commercial relations that have grown since the conflict in Ukraine. A free trade agreement is being discussed between India and Russia which would strengthen the already strong bilateral commercial relations that have grown since the conflict in Ukraine.

Notably, the growth in commerce between China and Russia has increased use of the Chinese yuan. China’s overall exports to Russia increased by almost 12% over the previous year, reaching USD 76.12 billion in 2022. Western sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine have hurt its economy, which has led to a rise in Yuan usage. Due to the change, Russia is now a unique example of a nation that has chosen to use the renminbi as its reserve currency instead of the US dollar or the euro.

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, backed the adoption of the yuan on a global scale in March. He endorsed “the use of the yuan in payments between Russia and countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America,” according to TASS, during his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Manturov is on a two-day tour of India during which he has co-chaired the Intergovernmental Russian-Indian Commission, with an objective to advance trade ties between two countries. On his first day in India, Manturov co-chaired the 24th India-Russia Inter-governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC).

The main institutional mechanism regulating economic cooperation is the IRIGC-TEC. It combines six working groups on energy, modernization and industrial cooperation, tourism and culture, research and technology, and information technology. The co-chairs of the 24th IGC conference will sign the final protocol during a plenary session of the intergovernmental commission (IGC) on Tuesday.

The topics of bilateral trade, as well as economic and humanitarian cooperation, are on both parties’ agendas. Furthermore, Manturov will hold several bilateral meetings, the Russian Embassy in India tweeted. Both countries have set up several institutionalized mechanisms for the progress of economic cooperation. IRIGC-TEC is a key organization at the governmental level.

A virtual meeting of the IRIGC-TEC took place last month which was co-chaired by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Manturov.