India aims to shore up engineering exports to Russia 

The Dollar Business Bureau

The Ministry of Commerce and the Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) are devising a strategy to push up the engineering exports to Russia, where economic mood is expected to get better with the improvement in crude oil prices. 

The economy of Russia is highly dependent on crude oil exports. In the wake of a sharp decline in crude price, Russia’s import of engineering products from India had declined to half in value at $355 million during period April 2015 to February 2016, from $744 million in 2014-15, EEPC said a release.

With the improvement in global crude oil prices and its positive effect on oil producing countries, EEPC India believes that this is a suitable time to reverse the falling trend in trade between the two countries.

As a part of its strategy, EEPC India, a premier trade and investment promotion organisation and the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), sponsored by Ministry of Commerce to promote engineering sector, will lead a delegation to 'INNOPROM', the flagship event of Russia on engineering and technology that is being held from July 11 to 14, 2016 at Ekaterinburg.

This year, India is a partner nation at the international industrial fair, which is going to host around 600 companies from 70 nations. 

The Russian industrial event serves a good opportunity for India to highlight the investment potential and trade opportunities as the world’s fastest growing economy, stated EEPC.

TS Bhasin, Chairman, EEPC India, said "With a turnaround in oil prices, the Russian economy is bound to pick up this year and India would like to take advantage of the same. We need to be pretty aggressive in pushing our best foot forward.” 

In addition to focusing on the bilateral trade, the country’s efforts will be to attract investment from Russia in the manufacturing sector under the 'Make in India' scheme, Bhasin added. 

China was the partner country in the previous edition of 'INNOPROM'.