OREANDA-NEWS India is open to Russian business, but our entrepreneur does not know it, for him this South Asian country is still a "black box", said Evgeny Griva, Deputy Trade Representative of the Russian Federation in India.

"The main problem in trade and economic relations between the two countries is that India, unlike China, is still a black box for our entrepreneurs," he said during the session "Economic cooperation between Russia, India and China in the BRICS and RIC formats in the Eurasian space: synergy and balance of interests" at the WEF.

Recently, Russia, according to him, "has made an energy transfer to India, taking 30% of its crude oil market."

"But in order to raise our trade and economic relations to a qualitatively new level, the country needs to be studied from the economic point of view. Modern India is the number three country in purchasing power parity, number five in nominal GDP, and number four in the stock market. The Indian market is open to us, but today we need to find the tools through which we can effectively continue to interact with India," Griva said.

He named, in particular, the Invest India program, where the Russian department has been specially created, as a good entry point into the Indian market. "The main thing is to find a localization point and get good preferences. India also has developed the practice of free economic zones. There are more than 400 registered, 262 of which are working," he stressed.

"We are now really feeling the ongoing turn of Russia to the East. We have an explosive growth of interest from Russian business. If earlier there were 4-5 appeals per day to the trade mission, now there are 20-30 daily from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok," concluded the deputy trade representative of the Russian Federation in India.

The Eastern Economic Forum is taking place on September 3-6 on the campus of the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok. RIA Novosti is the general information partner of WEF-2024.