India bolsters ties with Global South heavyweight Egypt

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins his first official visit to Cairo on June 24, with a senior official from his government saying the leader will meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi with "a very sharp focus" on strengthening defence and economic cooperation.

Fresh off a state dinner in Washington D.C., Modi's trip comes just five months after Sisi visited India, with two of the heavyweight nations from the Global South looking to extend their relationship beyond mere historic ties and regular diplomatic exchanges to a strategic partnership, Nikkei Asia reports.

The two-day stay is the first such visit to Egypt by an Indian prime minister since 1997. Modi and Sisi are expected to meet on Sunday.

"Over the last several months since the visit of the president of Egypt, we have seen an intense level of ministerial level political exchanges between the two countries," Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra told reporters in New Delhi on June 19.

"This is a very quick, reciprocal visit coming just within six months of President Sisi's visit to India," Kwatra said.

One area the two countries are focused on is defence. New Delhi sees an opportunity in Sisi's plans to acquire a large number of light combat aircraft in the coming years, with India's Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) pitching its homegrown, single-engine HAL Tejas fighter. The multirole Tejas, whose name means "brilliance," is used by India's air force and navy.

A single-engine Tejas jet performs at an air show in Bengaluru, India in February

An Egyptian source told Nikkei Asia that HAL has offered to set up a production line in Egypt and would allow the transfer of technology to the Egyptian side. It has also offered an advanced light helicopter and its combat variant.

The Indian company aims to cooperate with Egypt to use the production line as a base for exports to other parts of Africa and western Asia, the source said.

HAL's chief, C.B. Ananthakrishnan, told Indian news agency ANI this month that the company is in discussions with Argentina, Egypt and the Philippines over potential deals. "We hope that some breakthrough order will come," he said on the sidelines of the Paris Air Show.

On the economic front, Cairo is seeking a barter agreement with India to conduct trade without using the US dollar. To avoid depleting its dollar reserves, Egypt wants to make payments in rupees or through exports of fertilizer and gas -- both of which India imports heavily. Any such system would likely be part of a broader agreement that could see New Delhi extend a line of credit to Cairo worth billions of dollars.

Bilateral trade between India and Egypt expanded to a record $7.26 billion in the 2021-2022 fiscal year, surging 75 per cent from the year before. In Sisi's January visit, he and Modi said that would reach $12 billion in the next five years.

India is among the top five importers of Egyptian energy commodities, including crude oil and liquefied natural gas. Cairo sees Asia as the most promising destination for its natural gas.

According to the Indian Embassy in Cairo, India's main imported items from Egypt are petroleum oil, petroleum gas and chemical fertilizer.

Hussein Haridi, a former senior diplomat at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, told Nikkei: "India sees Egypt as a pivotal partner to its outreach to the Global South initiative, which began with its vaccine diplomacy during the COVID-19 pandemic."

Egypt has political and strategic weight in the Middle East and Africa, and also has great experience as one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1960s, Haridi said. The Non-Aligned Movement was a forum of developing countries that were not aligned with any major power bloc.

The hope is that cooperation between Cairo and New Delhi on the Global South initiative will create a global balance and preserve the interests of the developing world, he said.

India's quest to become the face of the Global South comes at a time when relations with its neighbour China are strained over border clashes in the Himalayas.

"At one side of the Arabian Sea is India and on the other side is Egypt. Strategic cooperation between the two countries will help in promoting peace and prosperity in the entire region," Modi said at the January meeting with Sisi.