PM, Saudi Crown Prince chair SPC meeting: What is the Strategic Partnership Council

Source: The post is based on the article “PM, Saudi Crown Prince chair SPC meeting: What is the Strategic Partnership Council”  published in Indian Express on 12th September 2023

What is the News?

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister co-chaired the first summit-level meeting of the India-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership Council (SPC).

What is the India-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership Council (SPC)?

Setup in: 2019

– Note: India is the fourth country with which Saudi Arabia formed such a partnership, after the UK, France, and China.

Aim: To establish a high-level council to steer the Indo-Saudi relationship.

Pillars: SPC has two main pillars: 1) Committee on Political, Security, Social and Cultural Cooperation and 2) Committee on Economy and Investments.

– Both committees have four functional levels of engagements: Summit level (Prime Minister & Crown Prince); Ministerial-level; Senior Officials Meetings and Joint Working Groups (JWGs).

What happened during the talks between India and Saudi Arabia?

India and Saudi Arabia have decided to expedite implementation of the $50-billion West Coast refinery project and identified energy, defence, semiconductor and space as areas for intensified cooperation.

– Note: The West Coast refinery project is a 60 million tonnes refinery-cum-petrochemical complex to be built on the Maharashtra coast by Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) from India and Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Saudi Aramco) and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (Adnoc).

The two countries also agreed to diversify the current status of their hydrocarbons relationship into a comprehensive energy partnership and inked eight pacts to boost cooperation in a range of areas, including digitisation and investment.

Both countries have also agreed to establish a joint task force to help identify and channel the $100 billion worth of investments committed by Saudi Arabia in 2019.(Half of this was for the West Coast refinery project).