Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday to discuss cooperation in the energy, pharmaceuticals and diamonds spheres and diversification of bilateral relations.
Singh is staying in Moscow on an official visit at the invitation of the Russian president. Both sides will hold informal talks on Sunday and will discuss topical issues on Monday.
Singh said on the eve of his visit to Russia that India was interested in diversifying bilateral relations and was looking for new areas of cooperation, such as pharmaceuticals, diamonds, bio, nano and information technologies.
"We need to expand our trade basket and encourage mutual investment. Pharmaceuticals, information technologies and the diamonds sector could be the spheres of further growth," Singh said in an interview with the Russian media.
The Indian premier said that the energy sector possessed considerable potential for growth and was of particular interest for India.
"We are especially interested in further developing interaction in the hydrocarbon sector," he said.
India's state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is currently taking part in Sakhalin-I, an oil and gas project off the coast of Russia's Pacific island of the same name. It is also the owner, via subsidiary ONGC Videsh Ltd. (OVL), of British oil company Imperial Energy, with production licenses for fields in west Siberia's Tomsk Region.
Atomstroyexport, Russia's nuclear power equipment and service export monopoly, has been building two reactors for the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in India's southern province of Tamil Nadu since 2002 in line with a 1988 deal between India and the Soviet Union and an addendum signed 10 years later.
Electricity production is scheduled to start in the first half of 2010.
MOSCOW, December 6 (RIA Novosti)
