India Seeks to Double Exports to Russia With New Rupee-Ruble Exchange
15/09/2022
India's crude imports from Russia jumped more than 10 times since March as global crude prices soared to record highs against the backdrop of the Ukrainian crisis. Indian exporters have also increased their fertilizer and coal imports in recent months.
India is expecting to double its exports to Russia by March 2023, which are set to reach $5Bln, according to A Sakthivel, president of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations (FIEO), in conversation with Sputnik.
The FIEO president explained that the mechanism allowing the use of national currencies in Russia-India trade will be ready within weeks.
"The Government of India has identified the State Bank of India as the bank that should deal with Russia and requested [Russia] to select any Russian bank to start rupee-ruble trade. The government is very confident that rupee-ruble trade will start in the next 15 days," Shakthivel said.
Sakthivel added that Indian businesses have no problems with payments from their Russian traders, but added that they still "are looking for a rupee-ruble mechanism."
Some areas in which Indian exporters expect huge orders from Russia are textiles, machinery, consumer durables and food.
In the first four months of the present financial year, beginning in April, India's exports to Russia were 30 percent lower than a year earlier, primarily because of the absence of banking channels caused by the western sanctions imposed on Moscow over its special military operation in Ukraine.
Still, Russia's ambassador to India, Denis Alipov, said that trade turnover between Russia and India is "increasing unprecedentedly" resulting in the volume of mutual trade reaching $30Bln by 2025.
"Trade and economic cooperation is actively developing, forced to adapt to modern realities. Today, we are seeing unprecedented growth in trade: in the first six months of 2022, it amounted to more than $11Bln," the ambassador said.
In 2021, trade turnover between Russia and India for the entire year amounted to $13.6Bln, Alipov added.
India has increased its crude oil and coal imports from Russia as Moscow has offered these products at discounted rates compared with the prevailing international prices.
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