New Delhi, India (AHN) – India and Russia, who have been friends since the days of India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, are now ready to go beyond the traditional bilateral issues of military, space and strategy. This was the unanimous feeling emerging out of a recent meeting between India’s External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna and Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. Both the ministers met on Thursday to prepare grounds for the scheduled meeting between Manmohan Singh and Dmitry Medvedev, prime ministers of India and Russia, respectively, to be held in December this year.
The new areas for cooperation, as zeroed in during the Krishna-Ivanov meeting, are civilian aircraft project, pharmaceutical, diamonds, IT and petroleum.
The Thursday meeting was between representatives of India and Russia to a joint body, called the Inter-governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technical, Economic and Cultural Cooperation. Both the sides also signed a protocol on the occasion with an idea to reach the target of USD 20 billion in terms of bilateral trade by the year 2015. The current year’s figure in this regard stands at USD 10 billion.
In addition to this, the two countries also talked about atomic energy and space sectors and tied the loose ends in this regard as well as discussing the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft project between Russian and Indian armies. The Union Cabinet of India is currently considering the proposal.
India also finds pharmaceuticals to be a “promising area” where it could look for increasing exports and address the trade balance in wake of increased Russian oil imports. In this regard, India has expressed complete agreement with the Russian vision document for the year 2020, under which it plans to decrease its dependence on imports by concentrating on joint ventures in key areas.
According to the sources, both India and Russia are keen to encourage pharmaceutical trade because of their high value-low volume currently and also due to the fact that Russia has to airlift most of the pharmaceutical consignments to fulfill its needs within Russia and Kazakhstan.
Therefore, the countries are seeking joint ventures in pharmaceuticals as well as in gas exploration.
Meanwhile, sources claim that both the countries are likely to sign on the dotted line for a fifth-generation fighter design contract during Medvedev’s visit to India in December. Russian company Sukhoi and India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) have already agreed this year to work jointly to develop the fifth-generation fighter jet, which will be based on Russia’s T-50 prototype fifth-generation fighter.
View full post on Politics Stories