ECONOMY
300 potential products listed out to help bridge trade deficit between India and Russia
- IBJ Bureau
- Dec 15, 2025
The government has identified about 300 products across sectors – such as engineering, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and agriculture – to help bridge the gap between Indo-Russian current trade levels and the five-year target. The assessment is being done as India and Russia pursue a $100-billion bilateral trade target by 2030 and seek to make exchanges more balanced.
Total trade between India and Russia stood at $68.6 billion in 2024-25, of which India’s oil imports accounted for $56.8 billion. India’s exports were $4.8 billion, while total imports reached $63.8 billion. The surge in oil imports following the Russia-Ukraine conflict has largely been driven by geopolitical factors.
“India’s share in Russia’s import basket remains modest at around 2.3 per cent, yet the complementarity between India’s global export strengths and Russia’s demand profile offers significant headroom. Engineering goods, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and farm sectors are natural fits for expansion,” notes an official, involved in the bilateral trade assessment, who does not wish to be named.
“The identified opportunity basket spans 300 products, for which India’s exports to Russia total $ 1.7 billion, compared to $37.4 billion overall import of these products by Russia. This stark disparity demonstrates the substantial complementary export space India can target,” the official has added.
A study by the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) has said that India could lift its exports to Russia sevenfold to $35 billion from about $5 billion, if it cracks market access in food, pharmaceuticals, textiles and machinery.
Apart from compliance challenges flagged by exporters, the other major friction in bilateral trade is payments, with Russian banks largely shut out of the SWIFT system. “This makes deals slow, costly and uncertain, and one way out is the wider push to local-currency settlement backed by credible clearing arrangements and greater involvement of India and Russian banks,” the GTRI has stressed.
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