The United States and India have held productive trade talks and Indian refiners are already cutting Russian oil imports by 50 percent, Reuters quoted an unnamed White House official as saying early on Friday (India time), a day after US President Donald Trump declared that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised to stop buying oil from Moscow.
The statements from Washington have fuelled hope that the tariff pressure on New Delhi would ease.
“I was not happy that India was buying oil and he [Modi] assured me today that they will not be buying oil from Russia. That is a big stop,” Trump had said, referring to Modi as “a great friend and a great man”.
New Delhi declined to say whether Modi had indeed made such a promise to Trump, or whether such a conversation had taken place at all.
“I am not aware of any conversation yesterday between the two leaders,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Thursday.
India has in the past lobbied with the US to let it buy sanctioned and cheaper oil from Venezuela and Iran in place of Russian oil. The Modi government has now also offered to buy more petroleum products from the US to bridge the $42.7-billion trade gap between the two countries.
Trump’s White House statement coincided with Indian commerce secretary Rajesh Agarwal’s visit to the US for trade discussions.
