Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said that importing Russian crude oil at the time of a global crisis was a part of the government's "inflation management".
Speaking at a function here, she said that it was due to the "statesmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi" that while keeping up the relations with all countries, India managed to get the Russian crude.
The Finance Minister said that the Prime Minister was fully conscious of the political fallout of the decision to get Russian crude and "here I give credit to the statesmanship of the Prime Minister that we kept our relations with all countries and managed to get Russian crude. Even Japan is now doing this".
She further elaborated that "at a time when the global crisis was going beyond anyone's affordability and we reduced (fuel) prices in November last year and then in June (2022)... at that stage taking a strong political decision... I respect the Prime Minister for his courage to get crude from Russia because they were giving it at a discount".
Otherwise, the Finance Minister said, India's entire import only had 2 per cent of the Russian component. "It was ramped up to 12 per cent within a couple of months," she added.
