New Delhi: Philippines President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr will arrive in India Monday for a state visit from 4 August to 8 August, with New Delhi seeking to expand its strategic footprint in South East Asia. This will be Marcos’s first visit to India after taking office in 2022, and he will be accompanied by senior dignitaries and business representatives.
“Both countries have developed a strong partnership across a wide spectrum of areas, including trade and investment, defence and security, maritime cooperation, agriculture, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and digital technologies,” MEA S. Jaishankar said in a statement Thursday. He added that the two countries have closely engaged at regional level through India’s Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with ASEAN.
For the Philippines, India has been an important defence partner. In 2022, they made a deal worth $374.96 million to purchase the BrahMos missile system. The second batch of the BrahMos system was delivered to the Philippines in April 2025. The two countries have also endeavoured to deepen the naval relationship between each other, through maritime exercises in the South China Sea, which are to begin on 3 August.
India has increasingly become a key partner for the Philippines, as the situation in the South China Sea remains tense. Manila has, over the last couple of years, faced a number of incidents with China over disputed territories in the South China Sea, including the Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands.
An arbitral tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague decided in 2016 that China’s claims based on the “nine-dash line” had no legal basis under United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and that certain maritime areas fall within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Beijing rejected the directive.
Last year, during a visit to the Philippines, Jaishankar announced India’s backing for Manila’s sovereignty, urging all parties to adhere to the UNCLOS in “letter and spirit”. India’s position irritated Beijing at the time, asserting that third parties have no right to interfere in the dispute.
New Delhi-Manila ties in the past
India and the Philippines have shared both strategic and cultural ties. Sanskrit has had a linguistic influence on the Filipino language, and artifacts discovered in the Philippines, show that India and the Philippines share a long history of cultural association.
The August visit will follow the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and the Philippines. In November of 1949, soon after both countries gained independence, various treaties and agreements were signed and since then there have been several bilateral State Visits between both nations. In 1952, a Treaty of Friendship was signed, asserting the mutual aspiration to strengthen friendly relations and perpetuating “peace and everlasting amity” between the two nations.
India’s Look East policy, launched in 1991, with the objective to develop stronger ties with the ASEAN countries, along with the 2014 Act East policy led to India taking a more enterprising role in developing a strong association with countries in the Southeast of Asia, including the Philippines.
The MEA reaffirmed in his announcement that India’s relations with the Philippines are an “integral part of Vision MAHASAGAR and [India’s] vision of the Indo-Pacific.”
To date, there have been four Presidential Visits from the Philippines to India, the first being a stop-over visit from President Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1976, followed by an official three-day visit from President Fidel Ramos in 1997, during which he discussed trade and security with then Indian Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda. Next, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo came to India in 2007 and visited Mumbai, New Delhi, and Agra. In January 2018, President Rodrigo Duterte visited to attend the ASEAN-India Summit and India’s Republic Day celebration as a chief guest along with other leaders of ASEAN, resulting in various talks regarding trade, investment, and defence cooperation between the two countries.
From India, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi became the first Indian Head of State to visit the Philippines in 1981, where she met with ASEAN leaders. President R. Venkataraman visited in 1991, followed by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in 2006 on a three-day visit aimed at strengthening ties through MoUs on trade, investment, and agriculture. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Manila twice in his two terms, and President Ram Nath Kovind visited the Philippines to mark the 70th anniversary of Indo-Filipino relations.
Modi and Marcos will hold bilateral talks on 5 August, which will be followed by a visit to Bengaluru before the President returns to the Philippines on 8 August.
Mannat Randhawa is an intern with ThePrint.
(Edited by Vidhi Bhutra)