India, Russia business meet to focus on IT, pharma cooperation

MOSCOW: Identified as the most promising sectors in the innovative partnership, the high profile Indo-Russian business meet scheduled for tomorrow here is to focus on the bilateral cooperation in Information Technology and pharmaceuticals.

Principal Secretary to Prime Minister T K A Nair is leading the top brass of the Indian IT and Pharma sectors at the meet to be addressed by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who is co-chairman of the Indo-Russian inter-governmental commission on trade and cooperation.

The business meet has been organised as the followup of the summit level talks during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to New Delhi last month, sources said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Medvedev, who have set the target of USD 20 billion bilateral trade by 2015, see the hi-tech, innovative interaction as the key to this.

Earlier, the two countries failed to reach the USD 10 billion target by 2010 despite the drop in the value of US dollar as bilateral trade was limited to the traditional trade basket.