Modi – Abe talks may clinch fifty thousand crore submarine deal between India and Japan
New Delhi, 15th Sept: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hold his 10th summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi Yesterday, underscoring the importance of strategic ties between the countries as the two face an increasingly assertive China. Supplying submarine technology would lock Japan and India into an even tighter defense relationship for years to come.
Despite the close relationship between the two right-leaning nationalist leaders, Japan is hesitant to plunge into negotiations on submarine exports. Japan is among the countries India contacted for information about cooperating on its plans for six diesel submarines to add to the underwater fleet it is seeking to build to counter that of China, in a project worth about 50,000 crore rupees ($7.8 billion). The two governments held their first round of talks on overall defense technology cooperation last week, but are not currently in negotiations on the submarine project, according to a Japanese foreign ministry official who asked not to be named.
In India, an official from the Ministry of Defence who asked not to be named citing rules, said the process for submarine procurement had just been initiated with the Japanese submarine builder. It will be a long, drawn process, said another Ministry of Defence official. Indian Navy spokesman D. K. Sharma said he had no comment on the matter. While the Japanese government is not ruling out a deal, here are some reasons why it probably won’t be the front runner. Japan only loosened its decades-old self-imposed ban on defense exports in 2014. The exclusively domestic focus of the industry has kept it small in scale, resulting in higher costs, which are off-putting for India. The two countries have, for example, been negotiating a possible sale of Shin Maywa’s US-2 amphibious aircraft for years, but have so far failed to agree on a price. The roughly $12 billion yen ($109 million) per plane price tag, depending on specifications, is one of the key sticking points, according to the Japanese foreign ministry official. He added that the talks would take some time.
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