The Indian government is formulating an incentive package for exporters to increase the use of the Indian rupee in international trade settlements, including with Russia.
Reuters on Wednesday reported that India is aiming to "add trade worth $6Bln to $7Bln with Russia in the next two months".
"The department of commerce is working with the central bank and the revenue department to ensure facilitation of rupee-related transactions as foreign exchange realization in accordance with RBI's notification last month," Reuters cited a senior government official as saying.
Without delving into many details, the news agency reported that the government might extend rebates on taxes and customs duties to goods exported using the rupee as currency to settle the trade.
Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on 8 August in the parliament that allowing invoicing and payments for international trade in the Indian rupee could help the country reduce the ballooning trade deficit.
"The RBI has put in place the arrangement to promote growth of global trade by reducing the dependence on hard currency, with emphasis on exports from India," Sitharaman said.
The central bank has received requests from large banks to open vostro - or third party - accounts in India. The arrangement makes it easier to trade in the national currency.
Industry sources told Sputnik that Russia shared a list of items with Indian organizations to import dozen of items such as paper, textiles, leather, motor parts, medical equipment, garments, furniture, consumer durables and jewelry.
"Russia wishes to implement rupee-denominated trade in a big way. Once this mechanism starts operating in a large part of the bilateral trade, exports will jump many times," a person working with the export organization told Sputnik.
At least 15 Russian banks, including Petersburg Social Commercial Bank, Zenith Bank, and Tatsotsbank, are negotiating with Indian lenders to facilitate bilateral trade in national currencies to avoid western sanctions.
India has increased its crude imports from Russia since March this year. However, exports of merchandise items could not take off according to New Delhi's expectations because of logistic problems.