Describing the G7 price cap as “nonsense”, Russia’s deputy chief of mission to the Russian embassy in India, Roman Babushkin, has said that India and Russia will continue to explore new avenues to boost bilateral trade which reached more than $27Bln in the first nine months of this calendar year.
“We are committed to continuing our robust trade ties with India. What is worrisome is that this price capping might damage the energy industry as a whole. We don’t expect any losses for Russia,” Babushkin said while talking to Sputnik in New Delhi.
Babushkin, however, did not confirm media reports claiming that Moscow offered to build and lease large-capacity ships to India after New Delhi refused to observe the price cap on Russian oil.
Indian businesses have been largely dependent on foreign shipping lines and spent more than $80Bln in transport services last year.
On the trade ties between the two countries, Alexander Rybas, trade commissioner of the Russian Federation in India, said that such an increase in trade volume was primarily because of a spike in the supply of mineral products, primarily oil, from Russia to India.
“Now, our main task is to diversify the composition of trade. We are also keen to increase the volume of Indian supplies in bilateral turnover to stabilize the trade balance between both our countries," Rybas added.
The world’s leading commodities market data and analytic firm Kpler on Monday said that India has been snapping up more Russian crude than ever before since the imposition of the price cap on 5 December by G7 countries and their allies.
“December will be the highest level [of Russian oil imports to reach India] and January might be even higher than December,” says Viktor Katona, lead crude analyst at Kpler, told The Telegraph.
The analyst estimates that India has been buying about 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) in December, almost 50 percent higher than the amount it bought in October and November.
“The amount of actual buying that the Indian refiners are doing is just mind-boggling,” Katona added.
Russia replaced Iraq as India’s top oil supplier in October, constituting 22 percent of the total imports.
Schedule Issues Behind Delayed Annual Summit
Babushkin, while speaking on the sidelines of an event at the BRICS youth forum in New Delhi, said that the India-Russia Annual Summit could not take place this year because of scheduling issues. The bilateral summit between them has taken place since 2000.
“There is probably a major scheduling issue because in this particular period the Prime Minister was engaged in the domestic agenda,” he said.
Recalling the fruitful meeting between Modi and Putin in Samarkhand on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, Babushkin said that the two leaders discussed the “full range of strategic partnership’’.
“It was a really ground-breaking meeting,’’ the diplomat added.
He added that the two countries are united by a shared culture.
“Cultural dimension is creating real ground for strategic partnership which is based on people-to-people ties,” he emphasized.