EAM Jaishankar holds talks with Filipino Foreign Affairs Secretary

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday held “productive” talks with Filipino Foreign Secretary Enrique A Manalo with a focus on boosting bilateral ties in areas of defence, counter-terrorism, health and trade.

In the talks, the two sides also deliberated on the situation in the Indo-Pacific.

In a tweet, Jaishankar described the talks at the fifth India-Philippines Joint Commission on Bilateral Cooperation as “productive and comprehensive” and said the dialogue focused on broadening overall cooperation.

“Our agenda today covered defence, maritime security, counter-terrorism and transnational crimes. As also our growing economic ties, including in trade & investments; development cooperation; health & pharma; tourism; air services; agriculture; fintech; S&T and space cooperation,” Jaishankar said.

He said the importance of greater people to people ties, specifically in tourism and education sectors, was noted. “I must first of all compliment you on the article in the Indian Express. I think, early this morning I got a number of comments on that article, all uniformly positive,” Jaishankar said in his opening remarks at the meeting. Manalo, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs of the Philippines, arrived here on Tuesday on a four-day visit.

In a lecture at a think-tank on Wednesday, Manalo said the Philippines wants to develop a “very robust” defence partnership with India and is looking forward to procuring military hardware from it.

The defence and security ties between India and the Philippines are on an upswing. In January last year, the Philippines concluded a USD 375 million deal with India for the procurement of three batteries of the BrahMos cruise missile.

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