Wednesday saw the departure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for Indonesia in preparation for the ASEAN-India Summit and the East Asia Summit in Jakarta.
“The Prime Minister will attend the 18th East Asia Summit, which hosted by Indonesia as the ASEAN Chair at the time, and the 20th ASEAN-India Summit during his visit. The next ASEAN-India Summit would the first summit after India and ASEAN’s relations were upgraded to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2022. According to a press statement from the Ministry of External Affairs, the summit “will review the development of India-ASEAN relations and chart the future direction of cooperation.”
According to the press release, the East Asia Summit will give leaders of ASEAN nations and its eight conversation partners, including India, a chance to discuss problems of regional and international importance.
Friendship Between India and ASEAN
In recent years, India and ASEAN’s friendship has significantly deepened. $135 billion in bilateral commerce is more than 11% of India’s total international trade. In addition to their maiden maritime exercise in May of this year, India and ASEAN conducted their conference of defense ministers in November of last year.
“Our priority has been to improve ASEAN’s connectedness on all fronts, including the physical, digital, economic, and interpersonal. Through flights operated by Indigo and Batik Air, direct air connection between India and Indonesia created in August of this year. We have recently begun operating direct flights to Vietnam. The real-time cross-border payment connectivity between UPI and Singapore’s Pay Now introduced earlier in February by the prime minister and his Singaporean counterpart. At a special media conference held in New Delhi, Secretary (East) Saurabh Kumar stated, “We are looking at methods to expand this to other ASEAN’s nations.
The two parties agreed to finish the ASEAN India Trade in Goods Agreement review by 2025.
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