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India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyan Jaishankar to Moscow Soon on Infrastructure
20 décembre 2023
EIRNS—India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyan Jaishankar plans to visit Moscow for the fourth time this year. According to RT, he will meet with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on a) Indian investment in the Russian Far East and North ; b) increasing trade and using national currencies ; and c) “connectivity initiatives,” which RT writes will focus on further extensions of the International North-South Transport Corridor, citing President Putin’s Dec. 15 remarks regarding extending the railway to Murmansk, which would link major Indian transport hubs to a key Russian seaport in the Arctic. “Cargo shipping by rail from Murmansk to Mumbai will take around 15 days. Transit schedules will be reduced by four times compared to the current routes,” said Putin. Otherwise Jaishankar “will be briefed on the Ukraine conflict.” The news agency says that Indian capital investments in Russia—a new phenomenon—have reached $14 billion and Russia’s investments in India, $16 billion. The two countries’ trade in 2023 will be $50 billion equivalent. Moscow, at this point, has a surplus equivalent to $40 billion in vostro accounts of Russian exporters’ banks, in Indian banks. Because the vostro accounts hold rupees now, Russian exporters can, in effect, invest their windfall of Indian fossil fuel payments in new Russian connectivity and power infrastructure projects, by letting these accounts lend to Indian infrastructure and engineering companies, or to Indian investors in the Russian projects. This requires the Russian government to agree. [pbg]
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