New Delhi, Dec 5 (PTI) India and Russia on Friday directed their officials to speed up negotiations for a mutually beneficial agreement on the promotion and protection of investments.

The matter came up for discussion at the summit-level meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin here.

The two leaders also underlined the current and potential cooperation in the energy sector.

The leaders appreciated the ongoing intensification of the joint work on a free trade agreement on goods between India and the Eurasian Economic Union, covering sectors of mutual interest, said a joint statement issued after the meeting.

"They also directed both sides to intensify efforts in negotiations on a mutually beneficial agreement on the promotion and protection of investments," it added.

India and the Eurasian Economic Union held the first round of negotiations for the free trade pact in the national capital last week.

India and the five-nation grouping, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), on August 20, inked the terms of reference for the agreement.

Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan are the five member countries of EAEU.

Modi and Putin, the statement said, agreed to expand bilateral trade in a balanced and sustainable manner, including by increasing India's exports to Russia.

The nearly USD 70 billion goods trade is heavily skewed in favour of Russia, mainly due to crude oil imports by India. It had a trade deficit of about USD 59 billion last fiscal year.

The statement further said both sides emphasised addressing tariff and non-tariff trade barriers, removing bottlenecks in logistics, promoting connectivity, ensuring smooth payment mechanisms, and finding mutually acceptable solutions for issues of insurance and reinsurance for the timely achievement of the revised bilateral trade target of USD 100 billion by 2030.

"Russia and India have agreed to continue jointly developing systems of bilateral settlements through the use of national currencies in order to ensure the uninterrupted maintenance of bilateral trade," the statement said.

On the energy partnership front, it said the two sides discussed and commended their wide-ranging cooperation in the energy sector as a significant pillar of the special and privileged strategic partnership.

They also acknowledged the current and potential cooperation between Indian and Russian companies in various fields, such as oil and oil products, oil refining and petrochemical technologies, oilfield services, upstream technologies and related infrastructure, LNG and LPG related infrastructure, among others.

India and Russia also agreed to deepen cooperation in building stable and efficient transport corridors, with a focus on expanding logistics links for improving connectivity and enhancing infrastructure capacity to support the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), the Chennai-Vladivostok (Eastern Maritime) Corridor, and the Northern Sea Route.

They welcomed the signing of the MoU on the Training of Specialists for Ships Operating in Polar Waters, it added. PTI RR NKD NKD BAL BAL