The Hindu Business Line : Still long on intent

New Delhi and Moscow must do much more to facilitate exchanges between Indian and Russian companies and deliver on the promise of economic co-operation.

The recent visit of the Russian Prime Minister, Mr Victor Zubkov, had two publicised objectives, namely, the launching of the “Year of Russia in India” and participation in the second meeting of the Indo-Russian Forum on Trade and Investment. The unstated goal, however, was to put back on track India-Russia ties, which have of late come under strain, signs of which were evident during the October visit of the External Affairs Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, and that of the Prime Minister in November to Moscow. As regards economic ground realities, though, no quantum leap seems to have been achieved by Mr Zubkov’s visit.

Indeed, the visit has been marked by a strong focus on intentions rather than actual implementation of economic accords. To take the broad view first, the two sides have said they “will operationalise the Joint Task Force to implement recommendations to increase bilateral trade to $10 billion by 2010 and consider a Comprehensive Economic Co-operation Agreement”. While this is all very comforting, unless specific progress is made in the various sectors with a sizable potential for bilateral co-operation, when the next meeting of the Forum on Trade and Investment takes place in 2009, or earlier, there will be nothing to report by way of concrete progress. The scale of the effort required to meet the 2010 target is clear from the fact that in 2006-2007 bilateral trade was around $3.3 billion, which means the projected increase in trade is unprecedented. In fact, the meat of Mr Zubkov’s visit was in the forum discussions — attended by the visiting Russian Minister for Economic Development, Ms Elvira Nabiullina, and the Union Commerce Minister, Mr Kamal Nath — where the problems affecting the expansion of India-Russia trade and economic ties were discussed. None of the issues discussed were new, as were none of the comments made on them. Seen against this background, the reports indicating that nearly $8 billion worth of projects were discussed between the visiting Russian businessmen and their Indian counterparts, and a joint CEOs’ Council had been set up, though encouraging, really do not amount to much unless issues relating to visas and transaction procedures are sorted out first.

Mr Zubkov has returned home, and the bottomline is that the Russian ban on some Indian farm products still remains in place. This should effectively deflate the euphoria generated by the “progress” reported on the civil nuclear cooperation front, which will materialise only after the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group rules favourably on India’s nuclear status. An announcement on the aircraft-carrier Admiral Gorshkov price issue would also have been welcome, but that too has been passed over in eloquent silence. Given the interest shown by Indian and Russian companies in mutually beneficial co-operation, the two Governments must do much more by way of facilitating the exchange if the promise of India-Russia economic co-operation is to bear good fruit.

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