New Delhi (Sputnik) — In a bid to boost bilateral trade to $30 billion by 2025, Russia has asked Indian start-up companies to play the role of catalysts to bring large Indian companies and Russian investors closer. The two governments have agreed to give high priority to the removal of obstacles to trade in order to improve upon the 21.5 percent growth in two-way trade recorded last year, according to Russia's Deputy Minister for Economic Development Alexey Gruzdev.
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Gruzdev is of the opinion that innovation-driven small sector enterprises play a critical role in bridging the existing gap between Indian and Russian firms.
"Innovative business strategies along with the removal of certain trade barriers will able to raise bilateral trade to $30 billion by 2025 from the current level of $7.5 billion," Alexey Gruzdev said while interacting with Indian industry representatives in New Delhi.
The Russian and Indian economies enjoy complementary [features] in several areas, including the agriculture, machine building, and energy sectors.
"These are the areas that we will concentrate on this year to give an incentive to bilateral trade and investment," Alexey Gruzdev added.
"It is important to judge the strength of India-Russia business ties by the success stories of collaboration in sectors such as oil and gas. India-Russia B2B relations are poised to grow and deepen as the Indian government was committed to providing the required hand-holding to Russian companies through ‘Invest India', a joint venture between the central and state governments and industry body FICCI," G. V. Srinivas, Joint Secretary of India's Ministry of External Affairs, said.
Meanwhile, V. Makarov, President of RUSSOFT — an association of software companies from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus — has presented before the Indian government various information communication technology proposals from Russian companies in sectors such as software, the deployment of data communication networks, the creation of an automated multi-lingual translation system and a multi-modal biometric personal identification and authentication system for joint projects with India.