Russia-India trade can touch $10 bn

Ahead of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's visit to India, which will focus on enhancing economic cooperation between the two countries, Moscow on Monday said bilateral trade can increase up $8-10 billion in the next five years.

The development of Russian-Indian economic cooperation will be "prioritised" during the March 15-17 visit of Prime Minister Fradkov to New Delhi, Russian Ambassador to India Vyacheslav Trubnikov said.

At present the Russian-Indian trade is of about $2 billion. Trubnikov said "the real possibilities exist to increase the bilateral trade to $8-10 billion in the next five years."

According to the Russian envoy, the lack of information exchange between business circles of the two countries was primarily hampering the rapid development of bilateral trade relations, Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported.

"In this connection, the problem of a narrow product range and a high share of the primary product group emerges," the envoy said.

"There is a need to improve and expand the commodity structure of trade, particularly increasing the share of the high-tech and science-intensive produce in this commodity structure," Trubnikov said in an interview to the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

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