Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be using his first visit to India this week to deepen business and defense ties with Asia’s third-largest economy in the face of rising strategic competition from China.
Albanese is set to discuss China’s military and economic assertiveness with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India is locked in a Himalayan border stand-off with Chinese troops while Australia is just emerging from informal restrictions imposed by China on coal shipments three years ago due to a dispute over the origins of Covid-19.
The Australian leader’s four-day visit kicks off Wednesday and is also intended to revitalize talks for the next stage of the process for a full trade agreement. The two nations signed an interim trade pact last year and Australia views India as an important trading partner to diversify its economic reliance on China’s appetite for food and fuel commodities.
It is Albanese’s first visit to India since coming to power in May 2022, and the first for an Australian prime minister since 2017.
“Our prime ministers are meeting at the time of global complexities where geo-strategic competition is causing disruptions,” Australia’s envoy to India Barry O’Farrell told Bloomberg News. “Australia and India have an important role to play together to help the region navigate those complex headwinds.”
Following Albanese’s meeting with Modi, agreements are set to be signed on procuring rare-earth and critical minerals from Australia, as well as deepening defense relations.
Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell and Resources Minister Madeleine King are accompanying Albanese for the state visit. Farrell told Bloomberg News in February that with a “bit of goodwill” there could be significant progress on the free trade agreement within the next year.
“The last one took ten years,” Farrell said at the time. “The hardest parts of that agreement are still to come — it’s access to their agricultural markets from our point of view, it’s labor market entry into Australia from their points of view.”
In a statement to Bloomberg News, King said Australia and India were “natural partners when it concerns critical minerals.”
“Australia’s critical minerals investment partnership with India has significant potential to help advance critical minerals projects in Australia and contribute to the diversification of global supply chains,” she said.
Albanese will join Modi to watch a cricket match and will announce plans for Deakin University to set up a physical campus at the free markets GIFT City in the Indian leader’s home state Gujarat. This will be India’s first foreign university college.
Australia-India ties are stronger than it has been for a long time, said Raghbendra Jha, professor emeritus at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy. “I’ve been watching the Australia India relationship since at least 2001 and I can tell you that this one of the best periods,” he said.
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