India confirms refusal to pay Russian oil in Yuan
As anticipated yesterday , the Indian government is expected to reject requests from Russian oil companies to pay for Russia's crude oil imports in Chinese yuan, Delhi government officials told Bloomberg on Friday.
Russia and its companies need Chinese currency as Russian trade has become much more dependent on China following Putin's invasion of Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. Moscow has a lot of Indian rupees, but it cannot spend them all, because there is no particular demand for Indian industrial goods, while it needs yuan. Russian businesses have largely abandoned dollar and euro payments due to Western sanctions and Russia being cut off from the SWIFT banking payment system.
Russian oil companies have been demanding payments in yuan lately, but the Indian government – which owns 70% of the refineries in the world's third-largest crude oil importer – will not accept these demands, Bloomberg sources said.
Some crude cargoes from Russia to India were recently delayed because the parties failed to agree on the payment currency, refinery sources told Bloomberg.
Earlier this week, unnamed Finance Ministry sources told Reuters that payment in Chinese currency for seven cargoes of Russian crude oil imported from state-run Indian oil refineries was delayed due to the Indian government's newfound hesitation to accept this form of payment.
State-run Indian Oil Corporation has already settled purchases in yuan, while Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum have not yet resorted to the Chinese currency, even though direct Russian suppliers have requested it.
India has increased imports of Russian crude over the past year due to Russian supply being cheaper than crude from the Middle East.
Between April and September, the first half of India's fiscal year 2023/2024, India's imports of Russian crude oil more than doubled to 1.76 million barrels per day (bpd) from 780,000 bpd in the same period in fiscal 2022 /2023, by ship – tracking data cited by Reuters.
OPEC reported a record drop in oil purchases from India between April and September, as the world's third-largest crude importer more than doubled its purchases of Russian crude, according to industrial and trade data compiled by Reuters.
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The article India confirms refusal to pay Russian oil in Yuan comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/lindia-conferma-il-rifiuto-di-pagare-in-yuan-il-petrolio-russo/ on Sat, 21 Oct 2023 06:00:16 +0000.