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.
