Exim Matters: India-Russia targets are big, but businesses are cautious

While bilateral targets are ambitious, exporters wary of payment, logistics risks; deeper ties with West still drive business pragmatism

After rejecting the proposals from the United States (US) to halt the war in Ukraine earlier last week, the Russian President Vladimir Putin came to India for a short visit, amidst mild apprehensions of importers and exporters about how the US and its European allies would react. They were also intrigued as to why the foreign institutional investors were withdrawing  their funds causing the rupee to depreciate by almost 2% in two weeks, despite very low inflation (0.25%), high economic growth rate (8.2%) in the July-September quarter and interest rate cut by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) (by