NEW DELHI, December 26. /TASS/. India and Russia are showing mutual interest in establishing joint ventures and localizing their production in the two countries, Russia’s Trade Representative in India Andrey Sobolev told TASS.

"This interest is clearly evident on both sides. Russian companies view India as a promising place for localizing production, targeting both the domestic market and expanding into South Asian and third-country markets, while Indian businesses are increasingly exploring opportunities in the Russian market," he said.

This attitude is increasingly systematically reflected in the agenda of intergovernmental dialogue, primarily within the framework of the Intergovernmental Russian-Indian Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technical and Cultural Cooperation and its sectoral working groups and subgroups, Sobolev noted. "The Intergovernmental Commission is witnessing a shift from a general exchange of interests to the substantive development of specific cooperation formats - from joint R&D and technology transfer to the creation of production capacities and the establishment of long-term cooperation chains," he said, adding that "this indicates a more mature stage of Russian-Indian cooperation, in which priority is given to a sustainable industrial presence and the formation of joint added value, rather than one-off trade transactions."