The meeting took place at the Government House of the Russian Federation. The two officials discussed preparations for the upcoming Russian-Indian Intergovernmental Commission meeting, the recovery of the upward trend in bilateral trade and projects in energy, industry and transport.
Cooperation
between Russia and India
is of strategic importance, said Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov at the
meeting. “It is based on equality, mutual respect and the consideration that we
show for each other’s national interests,” he went on to say. “Our commitment
to these principles holds promise of the friendly relations between our
countries remaining stable.”
As was noted at
the meeting, despite the coronavirus pandemic, contact between Russia and India
are characteristically as intensive as ever. “Unfortunately, the uneasy
epidemiological situation has caused us to postpone our meeting, which was
planned for New Delhi in late April, to a later date,” said Mr Borisov.
“Hopefully, today, we will be able to discuss the most important aspects of our
interaction, including cooperation in trade, transport, industry and energy. We
can continue to discuss these in detail at the full-format meeting of the
Russian-Indian Intergovernmental Commission we head, which will be held as soon
as the situation allows.”
According to Yury
Borisov, it is hard to forecast the epidemiological situation because new
dangerous coronavirus strains keep emerging. “Hopefully, the medical aid sent
by Russia has been a contributing factor in fighting the coronavirus in India,”
Mr Borisov said. Russia’s Emergency Ministry sent four planes to India with
emergency humanitarian medical aid, including oxygen concentrators, lung
ventilators and antivirus drugs.
Last March, Russia
and India returned to an upward curve in bilateral trade, which in
January-April was up 13.9 percent compared to the same period last year,
reaching $3.3 billion. In the 2020 pandemic year, trade between the two
countries, which had been steadily growing in the previous years, declined by
17.6 percent compared to 2019, to $9.26 billion. The two co-chairs of the
Intergovernmental Commission identified the conditions conducive to boosting
trade further and outlined appropriate steps to achieve this.
