India, Singapore to hold crucial meet ahead of PM’s visit
The two sides have finalised about half a dozen memorandums of understanding in areas such as digital cooperation, food safety and skill development
India and Singapore will assess bilateral cooperation and chart new areas of collaboration at a meeting of senior ministers next week, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s planned visit to the Southeast Asian nation next month.
These issues will figure at the second meeting of the bilateral ministerial roundtable, a special mechanism led by the ministers of foreign affairs, finance and trade of the two countries, in Singapore on August 26.
Ahead of the meeting, the two sides have finalised about half a dozen memorandums of understanding (MoUs) in areas such as digital cooperation, food safety and skill development, people familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity.
The meeting of the ministerial roundtable is expected to be followed by Modi’s visit to Singapore in early September, the people said. Modi was earlier expected to go to Singapore while returning from the Bimstec Summit in Thailand, but the Thai government cancelled the meeting of the regional bloc on Thursday following a change of leadership.
The people said there is a possibility that Modi’s trip to Singapore could now be clubbed with a visit to another Southeast Asian country.
While announcing the second meeting of the India-Singapore ministerial roundtable on Saturday, the external affairs ministry said finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, external affairs minister S Jaishankar, commerce minister Piyush Goyal and railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw will participate in the meet.
Besides interacting with their counterparts, the ministers will call on the Singaporean leadership.
The ministerial roundtable is a “unique mechanism established to set a new agenda for India-Singapore bilateral relations”, the ministry said. Its inaugural meeting was held in New Delhi in September 2022.
The upcoming meeting “will enable both sides to review various aspects of their strategic partnership and identify new avenues to further elevate and broaden it”, the ministry said.
The people cited above said the two sides are exploring the possibility of cooperating on semiconductors, an area where the Indian side has unveiled ambitious plans to achieve self-reliance in manufacturing chips.
The India-Singapore relationship has been anchored by trade and economic ties, with Singapore accounting for the highest FDI inflow of $17.2 billion during fiscal year 2022. In 2023, India was Singapore’s 12th largest trade partner and also its 12th largest export destination.
At its inaugural meeting, the ministerial roundtable identified five areas of collaboration – digitalisation, energy and green economy projects, food cooperation, skills development, and pharmaceuticals and healthcare.
The cross-border real-time linking of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Singapore’s PayNow in February 2023 was one of the first outcomes of cooperation under the digitalisation pillar of the roundtable and the two sides are currently up to about 3,000 transactions a month.
