India, Russia need to cooperate in pharma, defence sectors: CII

NEW DELHI: To boost trade and investment, India and Russia should increase cooperation in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, nuclear energy and defence manufacturing, industry body CII today said.

CII, which has taken a business delegation to Russia, organised a India-Russia Business Roundtable meeting there.

The delegation is led by CII President Sumit Mazumder, who highlighted the need to increase cooperation in sectors such as nuclear energy, renewable energy, oil and gas and defence manufacturing in India.

"In sectors like pharmaceuticals, Mazumder felt that Indian companies could look at Russia as a production base and Russian companies in turn could take advantage of India's R&D prowess," CII said in a statement.

He also stressed on the need to start talks for a free trade agreement to boost bilateral economic cooperation.

Quoting Indian Ambassador to Russia P S Raghavan, it said huge opportunities exists in both the countries to strengthen economic ties.

"However, he (the Indian Ambassador) was of the opinion that if the bilateral trade and business cooperation has to strengthen, it is necessary to address the issue of business visa. While this issue has been considerably addressed, issues of long term business visas still remains," it added.

Quoting Russian Deputy Minister of Economic Development Aleksander Tsybulskiy, it said Russian companies are showing keen interest in doing business with India following the visit of President Vladimir Putin to the country in December.

Tsybulskiy was speaking at the Business Roundtable meeting.