We involve India in very delicate spheres: Russia’s industry minister Russia really keen to set the future for private sector involvement, says trade and industry minister Denis Manturov Russian trade and industry minister Denis Manturov was part of the delegation which accompanied President Vladimir Putin to India last week. In an interview, Manturov spoke on the importance of an increased role for the private sector to improve trade that has stagnated at $10 billion for a couple of years, and how Russia was keen to source components for its aviation sector from India. Edited excerpts: India and Russia are said to have excellent relations in most areas, but trade and economic ties are not seen as keeping pace. How do you think this visit by President Putin will help improve economic relations? All visits (by) specially the president of our country gives the additional push to the business to develop projects and to activate the trade and economic relations. It’s always like that. But trade, originally we supplied to India readymade products. We have to use...the indicator of investments, direct investments country-to-country, business-to-business and the second indicator is production, the joint productions. If you will, for example, take into consideration the volume of production of your Indian companies—pharmaceutical companies—in Russia, how are you going to calculate it? As trade or as production in a local Russian market? So we have to take this indicator as well. It is not really simple to calculate actually. The joint venture that we created for developing aircraft—we have two in the military field, the fifth generation fighter aircraft, and in the second is multi-role transport aircraft. It will take time of course from the research and development to production but when the production will start how will you calculate that (as contributing to trade)? They are joint projects, joint investments, we will supply only components to each other. But the aircraft will be produced by both sides. Most of the trade seems to be between state-run or government companies on both sides. Why is the private sector not more involved in trade? I don’t agree because, (it’s) not only the government sector that is involved in trade relations because a lot of Indian private companies are involved in this process—as well as Russian (ones). Our president and the prime minister of India met business leaders, both Russian and Indian. There were representatives from the private and government companies there. So I think the future (is) with the private companies of course but, at this current moment, if you want to start some very sophisticated, high-technology projects most of these projects are on the government level. For example, if we are talking aviation, it’s the (Russian) aviation company United Aviation Corporation and India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, which is also a government company. But if we are talking of mining projects or mineral resources, it’s the future for the private businesses as well. There was an agreement between Russian private company Acron present in the fertilizer business and NMDC (National Mineral Development Corporation) of India; it was by a consortium led by NMDC, which is a government company in India to take part in a potash project in Russia.... So there is both government and private business actually. We are really keen to set the future for private sector involvement. India and Russia have been negotiating a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (Ceca). What is the progress on that and by when do you think the pact will be finalized? I can’t answer this question because I don’t know the details of this; it’s my colleagues from the ministry of economy that are involved more in the discussion. Russia has sanctions on it at the moment imposed by Western countries and Russia has also imposed counter sanctions banning imports from European countries, for example. How can India and Russia use this opportunity to increase trade and investment? We are taking opportunities not because of the sanctions but because of our relations. We involve India in very delicate spheres—in the military, in high technology; the military attack helicopters (Kamov) we have not proposed (to manufacture them) with other countries. We are making it with India because we have certain level of political and friendship...and it is very important actually to do business between the governments and the business-to-business (private sector). Most of our partners are from the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), and we are developing new machinery, transferring technologies. It’s not only Western countries and companies that have innovative technologies. Most of the innovative technologies are coming from Russia, the (former) Soviet Union countries—starting from television and ending with other categories. If you look at information technology, which are the countries that are working in this area? India and Russia; Indian and Russian companies and engineers. What has happened to the fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) project? It seems to have stalled. I don’t agree we haven’t made progress. We have accomplished the first stage and we are moving further to the second stage... What is the movement forward and what is the second stage? The first stage was the preliminary design. That we have already accomplished. The second stage is development of the project. India joined the project at the second stage. India is a 50-50 partner in this project; we cannot change anything and we are willing to change nothing. We received some additional request from the Indian side on the stage of fulfilment of the agreement to start the second stage. It’s bureaucratic things which takes time, unfortunately, but Indian engineers are living in India and taking the experience of our engineering—it’s a very delicate thing. India cannot produce the(se) aircraft from zero. It takes time to be experienced in this field. The FGFA and the multi-role transport aircraft are the next big items for cooperation on the agenda. It’s not in the future, it’s in the pipeline already. The future projects that we can discuss for India’s participation are the Sukhoi Superjet—we are keen to find some partners to produce components for Sukhoi Superjet to make it cheaper, more competitive to Western analogues. One additional proposal we have is for the MS-21. It is a medium-range aircraft that we are now designing and we proposed for the Indian side to participate again with supplying some components and to take part in this project.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 21:35:23 +0000
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