GS 2: IR | Bilateral, regional & global groupings & agreements involving India &/or affecting India’s interests

Why in News?

• India and Russia attended first-ever Strategic Economic Dialogue held at St. Petersburg in Russia. The Vice-Chairman of the NITI Aayog Rajiv Kumar led the Indian side while Economic Development Minister Maxim Oreshkin headed Russian delegation.

Objectives:

• The delegations from both of the countries discussed the development of bilateral ties in trade, investment, and industry at the platform provided by the two-day forum.
• The two-day forum aimed to bring together key business figures from both the countries while focusing on Transport, agriculture, and agro-processing, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), digital transformation and frontier technologies and industrial cooperation.

Indo-Russian Strategic Economic Dialogue:

• Indo-Russian Strategic Economic Dialogue was created by PM Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin in their informal summit held at Sochi in May 2018.
• The main objective of this forum is to improve the economic partnership between both countries which has begun to gain momentum since 2017.
• The forum also aims to improve economic partnership and also explore partnership and joint ventures in the service and IT sectors.
• To improve bilateral trade to $ 30 billion by 2025, India and Russia have agreed to alienate of obstacles to trade. Both the countries are aiming to improve bilateral trade which was recorded with 21.5 percent growth last year.
• India has already launched Strategic Economic Dialogue with China