The India-Russia bilateral investment treaty discussions have commenced, he said.

Prabhu was addressing an interactive forum between small and medium enterprises (SMEs) of India and Russia in Bengaluru.

As SMEs are often less informed about the schemes that exists in both the countries, there is a need to curate a digital bridge between the economies so that SMEs can benefit from it.

"It is also required that we are share our best practices to make our alliance as smooth as possible and create a vigorous market with access to capital and technology for businesses both in India and Russia," the minister said.

The two countries could cooperate in sectors such as energy resources, gold and diamonds, infrastructure development, digital technologies, research and development, pharma and biotechnology and agriculture among others to increase trade and investments. The bilateral trade between the countries has increased to USD 10.7 billion in 2017-18 from USD 7.5 billion in 2016-17.

This is published unedited from the PTI feed.