Jakarta. A senior Indian official revealed to the press on Tuesday night that the recent leaders’ meeting did cover the possible BrahMos missile system procurement, but they had not discussed the commercial details of the contract at length.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is finally back in Indonesia, years after his last visit in 2023. Earlier that day, the presidential palace announced that Modi’s talks with President Prabowo Subianto ended on a high note with a dozen key documents. The contract for BrahMos quickly grabbed global headlines as this would put Indonesia as India’s third foreign buyer of these supersonic missiles. 

At a news briefing after the talks, Rudrendra Tandon, the secretary (east) at the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, confirmed that the BrahMos was a topic of “extensive discussions”.

“It is an important part of the industry-to-industry collaboration that the two leaders are trying to develop, taking our defense cooperation to the next level,” Tandon said.

Asked about the contract’s value and the number of procured units, Tandon replied that price negotiations mainly take place business-to-business, alluding that it is for the developer BrahMos Aerospace and the other signatory, the Defense Ministry, to iron out the details.

“Commercial agreements are not really discussed at the highest level. Those are left for the companies to sort out.”

According to Tandon, India’s partnership in the defense field with Indonesia has been strictly limited to military activities. The leaders largely explored expanding this to the defense industry scope, citing how India’s arms production has acquired “a fair amount of maturity and technological sophistication”. On missiles, he also acknowledged that there is a “considerable amount of interest”.

“Naturally, these are commercial matters. It’s not something that’s discussed in commercial detail,” Tandon said.

At the time of publication, the Defense Ministry had not responded to the Jakarta Globe’s request for comments. 

Prabowo-Modi talks also unveiled an air-to-air missile cooperation agreement between defense holding Republikorp and Hyderabad-based arms producer Bharat Dynamics.

News outlet Reuters, quoting unnamed Indian sources, wrote that Indonesia’s BrahMos deal was worth “around $630 million”. 

Neither Prabowo nor Modi made a specific mention of the BrahMos missiles when they addressed the media. Modi, however, said that they were now “seeing greater trust between our countries as seen in our security and defense partnership.”

BrahMos Aerospace is an Indian-Russian joint venture. The Philippines and Vietnam have signed deals to buy the missiles.

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