India, Russia To Establish JTF On Trade

India and Russia will establish a joint task force (JTF) to encourage bilateral trade to a level of $ 10 billion by 2010 from the present two billion dollars. The JTF will be established by the end of this year when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits Moscow for summit talks with President Vladimir Putin, Commerce Secretary G K Pillai at a meeting of Joint Study Group (JSG) on economic cooperation here. The proposed task force would monitor implementations of recommendations, covering goods, services and investments, as given in a 150-page-report prepared by the JSG. JTF would be a time-bound mechanism with the final goal of inking comprehensive economic cooperation agreement (CECA) and free trade agreement (FTA) with Russia, once it joins WTO.