The government and companies of India do not want to comply with the Russian requirement to transfer oil transactions into rubles, Business Standard reports with reference to sources familiar with the situation.
After the start of the war in Ukraine, India increased the purchases of Russian oil more than 30 times, taking all the raw materials that Europe refused. From 30 thousand barrels per day in January, the deliveries of Indian refinery took off to 960 thousand barrels in July.
Russia insists that further export of oil to India is paid in rubles – by analogy with the scheme to which Gazprom switched to gas and China, Business Standard sources say. Payments bypassing the global dollar system are believed by Russian officials, will become invulnerable to sanctions: neither the American nor the European bank will be able to block them through its corses.
“So far we make payments in dollars. Ruble payments will be extremely complicated, because even if we want to pay in the Russian currency (necessary for this), there is simply no liquidity,” the source in the oil industry of India explains.
According to him, in order to pay rubles, you still have to use dollars – to buy Russian currency, and outside India. Oil importers raised the issue of Russian requirements at the government level, but even there they are not eager to switch to a ruble, writes BS.
Problems arose with banks, most of which do not want to open accounts to Russian credit organizations to provide transactions in national vocals, reported by Economic Times with reference to sources familiar with the situation.