Russia offers untapped opportunities for Indian businesses as New Delhi looks to boost its exports to its long-time strategic partner amid a $59 billion trade deficit, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.
"Russia has a huge demand for a wide range of industrial goods, consumer products, presenting multiple untapped opportunities for Indian businesses. Many sectors with a strong potential would include the automobile sector, whether it's cars, tractors, heavy commercial vehicles, electronics, smartphones, data processing equipment, heavy machinery, industrial components, textiles, food products, and many more," Goyal said during his address at the India-Russia Business Forum in New Delhi.
The minister underscored that trade between New Delhi and Moscow was skewed and that the former needed to work to make it more balanced.
"We need to bring more diversity in our trade basket. We need to make it more balanced, inter-state Russia and India. We need to add more variety. And there's so much to offer between both countries," he added.
Goyal also emphasised that India and Russia will work collectively to eliminate trade barriers hampering the growth of economic ties between the two countries.
"There's such a large variety of offerings that 1.4 billion Indians from India have to offer to Russia that the sky is the limit. And I think if we all work together, particularly our business community, takes a leap of faith, I'm sure this untapped potential can be explored. The partnership will flourish, will address the trade imbalance in the near future, and we'll work collectively to eliminate, reduce, dilute the trade barriers, if any. We'll work to create the right conditions to open opportunities for businesspersons on both sides," he stressed.
Meanwhile, Russian Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov stated that Russia was keen to boost tourism ties with India.
To expand opportunities in the sector, Russia was keen to expand air travel from India to Russia, declaring that Moscow was ready to issue flight permits to Indian airlines.
"We are ready to assist Indian carriers in obtaining flight permits to Russia," Reshetnikov said.
The Russian official noted that at present, only a Russian airline, which operates 15 flights a week, connects the two nations.
This is in sharp contrast to nations like China and the UAE, which have over 200 flights to and from Russia, respectively.