India and Russia are to step up their bilateral trade to 20 billion dollars by 2015. Announcing this at St. Petersburg today, the two countries will double their trade from nine billion dollars in five years. He was addressing a group of political and business leaders from Russia and India at the third India-Russia Business Dialogue.

According to an official release says Sharma emphasised on the need for diversifying trade basket by having more value added products. He said it will help to boost two-way trade as the current profile of trade is dominated by commodities with large imports of iron, steel, fertilisers and oil from Russia. He also stressed on boosting two-way investments.