New Delhi: Indonesia has reached out to India seeking one more BrahMos missile battery from India, over and above the one signed up for in March. But Indonesia is asking for a favourable line of credit to procure it.
“Defence cooperation is an important part of the relationship with Indonesia. But I don’t think we need to get into details of this at this juncture and particularly because we have not departed from here and all these are at preparatory stages,” Rudrendra Tandon, Secretary-East in the Ministry of External Affairs said responding to a query by ThePrint.
He was briefing the media ahead of the Prime Minister’s three-nation trip to Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand from 6-11 July.
ThePrint had in March this year reported that one battery of the BrahMos missile was being procured by Indonesia and the plan was to scale up the procurement in phases.
Capable of both coastal defence and ground attack besides anti-ship roles, the 290 km export version of BrahMos is the only supersonic cruise missile in the world that flies at three times the speed of sound.
It is the product of a joint venture between India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroyeniya in 1998.
Meanwhile, government sources said that a number of MoUs are to be signed during Modi’s visit to Indonesia and these include those in critical minerals and natural resources, besides healthcare, pharmaceuticals, education, space, among others.
What India is looking at is setting up joint ventures with Indonesian firms to establish processing factories for critical minerals.
One of the key critical minerals in Indonesia is nickel, a key component of EV batteries and electric vehicles.
Incidentally, China controls about 75 percent of the nickel refining capacity of Indonesia.
Nickel is a key critical mineral for India’s transition towards cleaner energy technologies. India imports more than 80 percent of its ferronickel (an alloy of iron and nickel), critical for steel production, from Indonesia. Nickel is also a crucial material for lithium-ion batteries used in EVs, with India’s entire domestic demand for EV battery materials met through imports.
The global demand for nickel is slated to rise from 3 million metric tonnes (MMTs) in 2023 to 5-6 MMTs by 2040, precipitated by the focus on clean energy technologies across the world. According to the Global Minerals Outlook 2024 report by the International Energy Agency, Indonesia and China accounted for 65 percent of the world’s refined nickel, with Indonesia alone projected to account for 44 percent refined nickel by 2040.
Indonesia is also rich in bauxite, cobalt and tin.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: Why China is upset with Indonesia over its new nickel mining rules