India, Saudi Arabia discuss steps to boost defence industry partnership

New Delhi: India and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday discussed measures to boost defence industry partnership and explored expanding initiatives to combat extremism, terror financing and drug trafficking. They also discussed the West Asian situation amid further efforts by Saudi Arabia and Iran to improve ties.

The issues were on the top of agenda of the 2nd Meeting of the Committee on Political, Security, Social and Cultural Cooperation (PSSC) under our Strategic Partnership Council (SPC) held here and led by the two foreign ministers.

"Our defence partnership has witnessed several "firsts" over the past few years, including the first-ever Land Forces joint exercise 2024; and two editions of our joint Naval exercises. We had regular exchanges on training and capacity building. And our cooperation has now expanded in the field of defence industry and exports as well," foreign minister S Jaishankar told his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.