Indo-Pacific Outreach: Singapore For Trade, Japan For Security

The 4th India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable (ISMR), held in Singapore on August 20, reviewed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership roadmap between India and Singapore, India's closest strategic partner in the region, focusing on six key pillars: advanced manufacturing, digitalisation, skills development, sustainability, healthcare, and connectivity.

For India, Singapore is a strategic gateway to Southeast Asia—anchoring trade, investment, and wider regional engagement. Singapore was India’s largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in FY2025–26.

On the same day, Japanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi held a bilateral meeting with his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh on a standalone visit to India, affirming their commitment to strengthening Maritime Security Cooperation and, subsequently, signing the Memorandum of Arrangement on Maritime Security Cooperation.

Maritime Security Cooperation

The Memorandum provides a framework for further advancing cooperation between India and Japan in maritime security and strengthening cooperation between the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and the Indian Navy, including information-sharing in Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA), as well as enhanced cooperation in areas such as Search and Rescue (SAR) and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR).

Put together, they convey a two-track Indo-Pacific strategy, with commitment to strengthening security and enhancing trade.

Bilateral Trade With Singapore

Singapore is India’s largest trading partner within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and remains a significant source of External Commercial Borrowings and Foreign Portfolio Investment. Bilateral trade has expanded substantially following the conclusion of the India-Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), increasing from US$6.7 billion in FY2004-05 to US$36.1 billion in FY2025-26.

About 9,000 Indian companies are registered in Singapore. Conversely, more than 440 companies from Singapore are registered in India.

There is also an active collaboration between India and Singapore to establish skill development centers in various sectors. The UPI-PayNow linkage is another landmark development in cross-border Fintech. Singapore is the first nation with which India has begun this cross-border Person-to-Person (P2P) payment facility.

India-Japan Defence Ties

Japan-India Special Strategic and Global Partnership constitutes one of the pillars for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.

At the bilateral meeting, the two Ministers concurred on the importance of sharing assessments of the regional and international security environment between the two countries, expressing their strong opposition to any unilateral actions that impede freedom and safety of navigation and overflight, as well as any attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion.

The two Ministers also concurred on deepening operational cooperation in maritime security. New Delhi and Tokyo must move swiftly to realise concrete maritime security cooperation that serves the strategic and operational needs. Both sides should maximise synergies to enhance mine countermeasures capabilities and explore the possibility of joint development in naval shipbuilding and design by leveraging Japan’s technological expertise and India’s production capabilities in accordance with respective relevant policies. 

Delhi and Tokyo have also concurred on further deepening cooperation in bilateral exercises through enhanced complexity, integration of unmanned systems, and pursuing joint exercises at short notice, whenever the opportunities arise.

Taken together, the bilateral engagement with Singapore and Japan indicates a stronger thrust on maritime, economic, and security collaboration, signalling a deeper commitment in the Indo-Pacific region. 

(The writer is a commentator on geopolitics and geoeconomics. Views expressed are personal.)