A clear imbalance has persisted in the trade relationship between Russia and India, with Moscow sending far more goods to New Delhi than it takes in. In India, rupee liquidity has remained tight due to exchange-rate controls, helping to lock in roughly 1 billion rupees each month in oil-related transactions with Russia that cannot be tapped domestically, a situation noted by Bloomberg.
Over the past year, Russia has become India’s leading crude supplier while imports from India into Russia have slowed. This pattern widens the bilateral trade gap and, if sustained, would push the quarterly shortfall toward the 2 to 3 billion-dollar mark, limiting what Russia can deploy elsewhere. The ongoing unilateral trade arrangements with India appear to compel Russia to accumulate around 1 billion dollars in rupee-denominated assets held abroad every month. Each quarter, the gap is forecast to widen within the same 2–3 billion-dollar range, expanding the pool of funds Russia cannot mobilize domestically. By 2022, estimates placed the overseas balance at about 147 billion dollars in potential capital that Russia could not access at home, a figure reported by financial media citing central bank data.
Industry watchers point to the RBI’s annual report for 2022–2023, which highlighted a dramatic rise in Russian crude shipments to India, increasing nearly fourteenfold. In that fiscal year, India’s imports of Russian crude reached about 31.02 billion dollars, up from roughly 2.2 billion the year before, signaling a pronounced shift in energy trade between the two nations. This trend reflects broader changes in energy markets and raises questions about payment arrangements, currency settlement practices, and the evolving cross-border invoicing pattern between Moscow and New Delhi.