India has offered Russia solutions to the rupee payments crisis.

The republic's authorities have asked their Russian counterparts to remove non-tariff restrictions on Indian goods in order to increase exports and reduce the volume of rupees stuck in Indian bank accounts, Moneycontrol has learned.

India has asked Russia to relax Russian language labeling requirements on Indian goods and eliminate multiple, varying standards applied to the same set of products, Moneycontrol reports, citing a senior government source.

According to Indian authorities, these non-tariff barriers hinder export growth, the entry of Indian electronics and engineering products into the Russian market, and contribute to the growing accumulation of rupees in Russian vostro accounts.

"India insists that Russia lower non-tariff barriers to be able to buy more goods from India and better utilize the funds accumulating in vostro accounts," the source said.

In 2022, the Indian government officially authorized the use of rupees in international trade settlements. To this end, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allowed authorized local banks to open special vostro accounts for foreign correspondent banks in rupees.

With Russia, such settlements began in December 2022.

The issue is expected to be discussed at the next trade talks between India and Russia, which are likely to take place in the second half of February, the portal writes.

Following the start of the operation in Ukraine and the introduction of sectoral sanctions by the West, Moscow reoriented energy exports to Asian countries, and India became one of the largest buyers of Russian oil .

Following the Russian financial system's disconnection from SWIFT in 2022, Moscow urged partners like India to switch to settlements in national currencies ( ruble /rupee) to move away from the dollar and euro. However, in October 2022REUTERS reported that Indian banks are reluctant to use the rupee trading mechanism with Russia due to fears of sanctions.

Against this background, an imbalance arose in trade between the countries, and in the accounts in India, as reportedBLOOMBERG in the summer of 2023 began accumulating up to $1 billion in rupees monthly, which was nearly impossible to spend due to currency restrictions. The head of the Ministry of Foreign AffairsIn May of that year, Sergei Lavrov stated that Russia had accumulated "billions of rupees in accounts in Indian banks" and that the issue of converting them into another currency was being discussed.

VTB CEO Andrey Kostin announced that the issue of the frozen rupees had been resolved by mid- 2024 , and most settlements with India and China are now carried out in national currencies.

In early December 2025, Kirill Dmitriev, the President's Special Representative for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries, promised that the rupee exchange mechanism would be improved as Russian businesses further enter the Indian market.

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