India and Russia has discussed ways to boost their economic ties to achieve the target of $30 billion in bilateral trade in the next 10 years. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, chairing the 21st India-Russia Inter-Governmental Consultations, also looked at ways to enhance the mutual direct investment to $15 billion by 2025.

Both the sides identified various sectors to achieve these commercial targets, agreed upon by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and and Russian President Vladimir Putin during their summit meeting last year. Bilateral trade during in 2014 amounted to $9.51 billion, with Indian export touching $3.17 billion and imports from Russia $6.34 billion. Agriculture, pharmaceutical and infrastructure were some of the areas identified by both sides to strengthen their economic engagement.

While economic agenda was one of the focus areas in the consultations today, the other areas deliberated upon were space, energy, culture and science and technology.