Settlement in rubles and rupees: India plans to buy energy from Russia bypassing sanctions - news from Ukraine, fuel and energy complex

Central Bank of India consults Russia on transition to ruble and rupee settlement. This will allow it to purchase Russian energy products after restrictions due to Western sanctions on the use of payment mechanisms in the Russian Federation, informed Financial Times, quoting a savvy banker.

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It should be noted that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is consulting with the government and state-owned banks of Russia to assess the scale of payments needed in rupees and rubles and which banks will be able to make them.

The chairman of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations (FIEO) confirmed the talks between the countries to the publication.

“We asked the government to put in place this mechanism. So the government is working on it. Very soon, I think we will get it,” FIEO president A. Sakthivel told the Financial Times.

India’s Ministry of Finance and State Bank of India declined to comment.

The final decision on the transition to recalculations for the energy carriers of the Russian Federation in rupees and rubles rests with the government.

The chairman of the Indian Business Alliance in Russia, Sammy Kotwani, roughly described a possible mechanism as follows: “I can give rubles to Sberbank, and they can give me rupees in India.”

In the past, India has used local currency mechanisms to circumvent Western sanctions. This mechanism allowed Indian companies to buy Iranian oil, circumventing American sanctions against Tehran.

A Foreign Trade Department spokesperson also told the publication that the ruble-ruble deal could provoke a furious reaction from the United States, which is India’s biggest export destination, buying for more than 50 billion dollars of Indian products per year.

The leaders of the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Canada and the United States announced sanctions against the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and disconnected several of its creditors from the SWIFT financial messaging system.