New Delhi: India and Saudi Arabia are enhancing defence cooperation with a focus on joint ventures and industrial collaboration to localise defence production. It was reflected in the statement of the Indian envoy in Riyadh Dr Suhel Ajaz Khan while addressing a defence industry seminar recently.
Dr Khan said, “India and Saudi Arabia traditionally have always been the largest importers of defence hardware, but now both countries are trying to localise defence production to the extent possible.”
Saudi Arabia aims to localise 50 per cent of its defence spending under Vision 2030, aligning with India’s Make in India initiative. Saudi Arabia being one of India’s close allies, India is keen to share several defence technologies that have been localised in recent years, the envoy said.
“Defence cooperation is always based on a high level of mutual trust. And I am happy to note that our two countries do enjoy that level of trust and that’s why we are interested in sharing a large number of defence products and technologies with our friendly country, Saudi Arabia,” Dr Khan said.
“India has opened up its defence sector for investments, presenting a lot of investment opportunities for Saudi companies,” Dr Khan told the seminar held in Riyadh in November. He advocated the path of ‘invest, trade, localise’, which fits into the Saudi Vision 2030 in which “you are trying to localise your defence industry like all of us should do, but we can be partners in that.”
Early this year, Saudi Arabia signed a $250 million contract for ammunition from Munitions India Limited, a Defence Public Sector Undertaking. Saudi defence companies displayed a strong interest in fostering partnerships in critical sectors such as shipbuilding, electronics, and emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and cybersecurity, the officials in the know said regarding the discussions during the seminar.
India-Saudi relations have seen a huge upswing in the last decade with defence and security emerging as one of the key pillars. There have been a series of high-level visits in the last two years maintaining the momentum.
India’s major public sector as well as private defence companies attended the seminar and after the discussions, Indian companies were invited to take forward conversations on specific projects including joint ventures in naval and aerospace technologies, the officials said.
In February, Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt visited Riyadh for the World Defence Show (WDS) 2024 during which his discussions centred around “exploring avenues for collaboration in areas of mutual interest, including increasing the scope of joint training exercises, technology transfer and exchange of expertise,” the Defence Ministry said.
In January, the two countries held the inaugural edition of the Army exercise ‘Sada Tanseeq’ at Mahajan Ranges in Rajasthan and Saudi Arabia was one of the 18 Observer countries at the second phase of Indian Air Force’s largest air exercise Tarang Shakti in August. The two Navies have a bilateral exercise ‘Al Mohed Al Hindi’ that commenced in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is reported to have procured the 155mm Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System (ATAGS) from Bharat Forge. Saudi Arabia has in the past evaluated two types of artillery guns manufactured from Bharat Forge.
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