Singapore PM Lawrence Wong to visit India next week, key MoUs on the agenda

Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong will travel to India on a three-day official visit from September 2, with several agreements expected to be signed across a range of sectors, sources told ANI. The visit comes as the two nations mark 60 years of diplomatic ties.

During his stay, Wong will hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both leaders are expected to witness the signing of memoranda of understanding (MoUs) in areas such as skill development, finance and digital cooperation, civil aviation, space collaboration and shipping.

A joint statement outlining a roadmap for the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership is also likely to be issued, sources added.

The visit follows Prime Minister Modi’s trip to Singapore in September 2024, where the two sides reviewed the expanding partnership covering security, technology, education, people-to-people exchanges and cultural ties.  

Earlier this month, the third India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable was held New Delhi, where Ministers reviewed the progress of various bilateral cooperation initiatives under the six pillars of ISMR, including Advanced Manufacturing, Connectivity, Digitalisation, Healthcare and Medicine, Skill Development and Sustainability.

They deliberated on ways to further deepen bilateral cooperation and identified a number of specific initiatives to pursue.

Inauguration of the second phase of PSA’s (Port of Singapore Authority) project in Navi Mumbai is likely to take place during Singapore PM’s visit, they said. Singapore is India’s largest trading partner in ASEAN. It is the leading source of FDI, amongst the largest source of external commercial borrowings and Foriegn portfolio investments.

From 2014 to 2024, the total accumulated investments that Singapore has made in India are approximately 159 billion US dollars, and by the end of this year, they are expected to reach around 175 billion dollars.

There has been an acceleration of Singapore investments in India in recent years. India and Singapore are also looking for bright spots as part of a comprehensive strategic partnership, which includes the export of green energy from India via Singapore, the sources said.

Data storage, small module reactors, space tech, quantum tech, and aircraft repairs are other areas of bilateral cooperation. There could be a discussion concerning the establishment of an MRO hub in Bengaluru with investments from Singapore, they said.

ISRO has launched several Singaporean satellites. These include Singapore’s first indigenous-built microsatellite in 2011, two more in 2014, six in 2015, and nine in 2023.There is active collaboration between India and Singapore to establish skill development centres in various sectors.

Skill Centre projects with public and private support have been completed at six places (Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan (Udaipur), Assam (Guwahati), Odisha (Bhubaneshwar) and Telangana (Hyderabad)), and two projects (Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal) and Gujarat (Gandhinagar)) are ongoing.

During the Prime Minister’s visit in September 2024, both sides exchanged an MoU on Cooperation in Education and Skill Development. Commercial and technical arrangements have also been worked out for the acceptance of the RuPay card in Singapore. UPI-Paynow Linkage is another landmark development in the area of cross-border Fintech.

Singapore is the first nation with which India has begun this cross-border Person-to-Person (P2P) payment facility. Defence cooperation between India and Singapore is pursued under the aegis of the Defence Cooperation Agreement of 2003, which was renewed under the Enhanced Agreement for Defence Cooperation in 2015. Both sides have signed several domain-specific agreements.

There are bilateral exercises involving all three services (Army – Exercise Agni Warrior, Navy – Exercise SIMBEX and Air Force – Joint Military Training). The 32nd edition of SIMBEX was held in Singapore in July-August 2025.The fourth edition of the India-Singapore Joint Military Exercise, Exercise Bold Kurukshetra, concluded earlier this month.

With inputs from agencies.