India and Japan concluded their 16th annual summit on Thursday by signing their first-ever defence co-development agreement and adopting a joint declaration on economic security, alongside a series of technology and energy pacts. The centrepiece hardware project will see Bharat Electronics Limited produce the UNICORN integrated naval mast, a stealth-enhancing system currently fitted on Japan’s Mogami-class frigates, for the Indian Navy. The two governments also announced a target of attracting ¥10 trillion in Japanese investment into India over the next decade and doubling the number of Japanese companies operating in the country.

From New Delhi’s perspective, the agreements reinforce a strategic partnership that Prime Minister Narendra Modi described as being built on mutual trust, which he called “our greatest strategic asset” in a period of global turbulence. Indian officials highlighted the convergence of Japan’s precision technology with India’s software capabilities, particularly in artificial intelligence, and framed the defence co-development as a contribution to regional maritime security and a rules-based order. The Indian side also stressed the inauguration of Maruti Suzuki’s fourth plant in Haryana, a ₹35,000 crore investment that will scale to one million vehicles annually, as evidence of deepening manufacturing ties.

Japanese statements, as carried by Jiji Press and other Tokyo-based outlets, presented the summit as a response to an increasingly coercive international economic environment, a formulation widely understood in the region to refer to China. The joint declaration voiced “grave concerns” over economic coercion and identified five priority areas for cooperation: semiconductors, critical minerals, information and communication technology, clean energy, and pharmaceuticals. Tokyo committed to supporting India’s oil-stockpiling system and its bid to join the International Energy Agency, while a new biogas initiative will establish 1,000 plants across India using Japanese yen loans and Suzuki’s distribution networks for compressed-natural-gas vehicles.

Both governments, as Quad members with the United States and Australia, view the deepening of bilateral economic security as a shared priority. The summit produced a roadmap for resilient supply chains in strategic sectors and a local-currency settlement framework to facilitate direct yen-rupee trade. A two-plus-two meeting of foreign and defence ministers is scheduled before the end of the year, and the Indian Prime Minister’s Office announced a dedicated Japan Business Week to address operational concerns of Japanese firms. The next concrete step is the implementation of the 120 cooperation documents signed on the sidelines, which Japanese officials said represent approximately ¥2 trillion in investments.