India plans tech centre in Moscow

An agreement to set up an Indian technology centre in Moscow to promote commercial use of Russian technology will be signed during Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal's visit beginning today.

The centre to be set up under the Technological Partnership Accord signed during President Vladimir Putin's New Delhi visit in 2002, will promote innovative young Russian scientists by helping them to make commercial use of their technology.

The Confederation of Indian Industry would also be involved in the functioning of this centre, sources said.

Sibal is scheduled to visit St. Petersburg and Irkutsk besides holding talks in Moscow with Russian officials on further expansion of scientific exchanges during his week-long visit.

Russia is the only country of the world with which India has the largest integrated long-term programme of scientific and technological cooperation involving thousands of scientists of the best labs and research institutes of the two countries.

Signed in 1985 by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, ILTP is the only joint project which survived after the collapse of the USSR and has been prolonged by successive governments in both countries.

Several world class cutting-edge technologies were introduced in India through ILTP, including the opening of Powder Metallurgy Centre in Hyderabad.

Under ILTP Russia had helped set up Bibcol polio vaccine plant in Bulandshahr and a gas hydrate centre has been set up in Chennai for tapping the immense energy potential of the sea bed.