India and Egypt on Wednesday decided to elevate the bilateral relationship to a strategic partnership and build resilient supply chains for food and energy security to avoid disruptions because of circumstances like the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

These decisions were announced after the bilateral discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi who is here to be the chief guest at the Republic Day Parade. According to foreign secretary Vinay Kawatra, talks were held in both restrictive and official delegation-level formats with the leaders stressing on the ties between two of the oldest civilisations in the world.

In his media statement, Prime Minister Modi said: “We have decided that under the India-Egypt Strategic Partnership, we will develop a long-term framework of greater cooperation in political, security, economic and scientific fields.”

Stating that there is immense potential for enhancing security and defence cooperation, he flagged the significant increase in joint exercise training and capacity building between the two armies in recent years.

Modi said: “We have also decided in today’s meeting to further strengthen cooperation between our defence industries, and enhance the exchange of information and intelligence related to counter-terrorism.

Briefing journalists on the talks, Kawatra said the political and security cooperation element of the strategic partnership would involve defence training and exercises, cooperation in platforms and equipment besides industrial partnership to forge a stronger base for defence partnership.

Given the challenges of food, fertiliser and energy that both India and Egypt face –- particularly in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict -– Modi and Sisi agreed that the two countries would work together to ensure and build reliable supply chains in food, fertiliser and energy, including, if required, government-to-government partnership.

The foreign secretary sidestepped a direct question on whether Sisi had sought more wheat or economic assistance from India but said the challenges both countries face were discussed. In the case of Cairo, it pertained to wheat and non-basmati rice whereas for India, it is phosphatic fertilisers in which Egypt has strong capacities.

Last year, India -- which had banned the export of wheat –- allowed 61,000 tonnes to be shipped to Egypt as it faced food shortages. Egypt is keen on attracting more tourists from India to draw more foreign exchange, and there was some talk of increasing the frequency of direct air connectivity between the two countries.