India and Philippines Relations Strengthened: Bilateral Relations, Defence, Trade and Commerce

India and Philippines relations took a new turn after Indian External Affairs Minister and his Philippines counterpart recently took part in the 5^th meeting of the Joint Commission on Bilateral Cooperation

5^th Meeting of the Joint Commission Of India and Philippines

• Both Ministers expressed keen interest to continue to work together on defense cooperation, including through the regular or upgraded official-level interaction among defense agencies, opening of a resident Defense Attache office in Manila, consideration of India’s offer for concessional Line of Credit to meet Philippines’ defense requirements.
• Both countries aim to cooperate on maritime domain awareness (MDA), joint patrols, and information exchange to enhance MDA capabilities.
• Discussions focused on expanding cooperation in existing domains, including anti-terrorism measures and intelligence exchange.
• Both countries explored avenues for collaboration in cyber security, artificial intelligence, and space cooperation.
• The Ministers engaged in wide-ranging discussions on regional and international issues of mutual interest for e.g., China’s growing assertiveness and territorial claims in the South China Sea.

India and Philippines Relations

• India and the Philippines formally established diplomatic relations on 26 November 1949, shortly after both countries gained independence [Philippines in 1946 and India in 1947].
• Relations have been friendly with shared values and commonalities, such as vibrant democratic polity, pluralistic society, rule of law, an independent judiciary and free press, and the widespread use of the English language.
• When India launched the Look East Policy and intensified partnership with ASEAN in 1992, this also resulted in stronger relations with countries in the region including the Philippines, both bilaterally and in the regional context.
• With the Act East Policy initiated in 2014, the relationship with Philippines has diversified further into political-security; trade and industry and people-to-people realms.

India and Philippines Bilateral Relations

• Bilateral relations have strengthened over the years with the exchange of high level visits, telephonic conversations, virtual meetings, etc
• The umbrella bilateral mechanism is the Joint Commission on Bilateral Cooperation (JCBC) co-chaired by EAM and the Philippines Secretary of Foreign Affairs
• Official level foreign policy and security dialogue meetings have been held regularly (from 1994 and from 2004 respectively, when the security dialogue was upgraded to a ‘Strategic Dialogue’ at the 2 nd JCBC).
• The Philippines has been supportive of a greater role for India in the UN Security Council. They supported our candidature for the non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council for the term 2021-22 as well as earlier in 2011-12.

India-Philippines defense cooperation

• The main stay of bilateral defence cooperation continues to remain capacity building with training exchanges and visits of delegations and units of the Indian Navy (including aircraft) and Coast Guard.
• However, defence ties were significantly enhanced with the signing in January 2022 of a contract worth US$ 374.9 million to supply the BrahMos missile system.
• Indian Navy and Coast Guard ships regularly visit the Philippines and hold consultations with their counterparts.
• The participation of officers of the armed forces of both countries in various specialized training courses in each other’s countries has intensified.

India and Philippines Trade and Commerce  

India and Philippines Training and Education

• Philippines is one of the beneficiaries of India’s flagship capacity building programme – Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC).
• To date, over 1000 Filipino professionals have availed of courses offered.
• ITEC Day is celebrated every year by the Embassy that brings together ITEC alumni across the Philippines

India and Philippines Diaspora

• The Indian community in the Philippines is estimated to be around 1,50,000.
• Punjabis and Sindhis (80:20) constitute the bulk of the community.
• While the Sindhis are primarily engaged in trading, especially in the retail sector and also some manufacturing, the Punjabis, mostly from rural background are predominantly involved in micro-financing.

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