We are the biggest foreign investor in India :Sistema

ST. PETERSBURG, Oct. 2 – As trade between the BRIC economies starts to move upwards, India and Russia have now set the more ambitious goal of doubling bilateral turnover to $20 billion by 2015. Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, currently in Moscow for trade talks said that India and Russia had turned the challenge of the global crisis to advantage as bilateral trade continued to grow despite the 10 percent decline worldwide. Indo-Russian bilateral trade has grown at about 30 percent a year since 2005. Mr. Sharma is leading a 70-member delegation of Indian business leaders to the third Russian-Indian Forum on Trade and Investment.
According to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, Indo-Russian trade increased by 17 percent in the first half-year of 2009 and is expected to grow to US$8.4 billion by the end of the year.
“India is one of the very few countries with whom Russian trade is growing, rather than declining this year,” Mr. Zhukov was quoted as saying in The Hindu.
Mr. Sharma warmly recalled the massive economic aid the Soviet Union extended to India in the post-independence years. “We deeply appreciate your support and help in building the foundation of India’s public sector industry,” Mr. Sharma said. “The concept of a planned economy laid in those years is still very relevant today”. Both sides called for diversification of trade into high-tech areas, such as IT, bio- and nano-technologies and non-conventional energy. Speaking at the forum, Vladimir Yevtushenko, whose multi-billion dollar conglomerate, the Sistema Group, forayed into the Indian mobile communications market through a tie-up with the Shyam Group, said the joint venture, Sistema Shyam Teleservices, was growing at a rate of 500,000 new customers a month and looked set to become an all-India provider of 3G voice and data services next year.
“Today, we are the biggest foreign investor in India,” Yevtushenko said.
Sistema Shyam has offered the Indian government to build a national crisis-management centre, set up a “safe city” program for Delhi and plans to diversify into space communication services on the basis of the Glonass, the Russian analogue of the U.S. GPS.
“Following the independence of India from Britain, India turned to Russia for assistance with collective agriculture development and advice. In certain areas, India’s larger industries are similar in organizational structure to those of Russia and China, having followed the old Soviet model,” says Chris Devonshire-Ellis, the founding partner of Dezan Shira & Associates, currently in Russia evaluating the potential for development in the country. “Although some of those policies have now been discredited as regards optimization of production, India and Russia do share many similar challenges and have long been partners and allies in commerce. It is cross border challenges and relationships such as these that will shape the future of the new world economy, and we look forward to increased bilateral and multinational trade between China, India and Russia developing over the course of the next five years.”