The Amir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, accompanied by a high-powered delegation of key ministers and businessmen, was in New Delhi on February 17-18, 2025 on a state visit. This was his second visit after the peaceful transition of power in Doha in 2013 when his father, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, abdicated in his favour. The highlight of the visit was the upgrading of India-Qatar ties to a Strategic Partnership, in line with other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman and Kuwait — with all of which the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has assiduously deepened relations since taking office in 2014.
This last decade has seen regular high-level exchanges between the two countries, including two by PM Modi in 2016 and 2024 and a visit by the then Qatari PM Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al Thani, in December 2016. These visits, as also External Affairs Minister Dr. S Jaishankar’s frequent visits for bilateral engagements and conferences, have resulted in a number of agreements principally in areas related to economic and consular ties. They also feature setting up of institutional mechanisms to maintain the momentum in cooperation, such as Foreign Office Consultations, Joint Working Groups and Task Forces on energy, trade and commerce, investment, security and law enforcement, health and labour and manpower development.
The readout of the Joint Statement (JS) issued at the end of Sheikh Tamim’s visit, besides announcing agreement on establishing a strategic partnership, indicates reinvigorated intent to cooperate in the fields of energy, investment and trade. The Joint Working Group on Trade and Commerce is to be elevated to a Ministerial Joint Commission with a target to diversify and double trade within five years from the current $14 billion, almost 90% of which is dominated by energy related supplies from Qatar. Exploring the possibility of settlement of trade in respective currencies is also on the table. While India is currently negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the GCC, the Joint Statement mentions the possibility of a standalone Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, such as India currently has with the UAE, and is in negotiations with Oman.
Investment patterns, LNG and the diaspora
On the investment front, where past expectations of substantial infusions of capital by the Qatar Investment Agency, (QIA), the sovereign wealth fund, were largely belied, a commitment of $10 billion has been announced during the visit, though without any specified time frame, in sectors such as infrastructure, technology, manufacturing, food security, logistics and hospitality, as also the opening of a QIA office in India. A similar commitment of $5 billion had been made during PM Manmohan Singh’s pathbreaking visit to Qatar in November 2008, the first ever by an Indian PM in 35 years of the establishment of diplomatic relations. However, in the years since, Qatar’s investments in India have been slow and are estimated to have only reached around $1.5 billion, with major projects being of recent vintage including a $1 billion stake in Reliance Retail Ventures in 2023, a 36% stake in Allen Career Institute, Kota, in July 2022, a 25.1% stake in Adani Transmissions Ltd signed in 2020 and a 2.5% stake in Adani Green energy in August 2023. According to information on the Indian Embassy website in Doha, there are over 20,000 big and small Indian companies operating in Qatar with a cumulative investment of over $350 million in the period 2017-2025. In February 2025, Adani Harbour Services Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Adani Ports, is reported to have taken a 49% stake in a joint venture with a Qatari company, Sea Horizon Offshore Marine Services. This will deal with shipping operations and management supporting Qatar’s massive liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, which is of strategic importance to India as the largest growing market for LNG in the world.
In undertaking a review of the India-Qatar relationship with the aim to reset its salience and establish a strategic partnership, a glaring omission clearly is defence cooperation.
And in LNG trade lies what is seen as the ballast of the relationship with Qatar which accounts for over 40% of our global LNG imports. Qatar started exporting LNG in 1996 and India was among the first countries to enter into a 25-year long-term contract in 1999 for the purchase of 7.5 million tonnes annually. This agreement was renewed in February 2024 for a further period of 20 years till 2048. With India’s LNG imports expected to surge in coming years because of national targets to increase the share of natural gas to 15% of our energy mix by 2030, the strategic importance of Qatar to India’s energy security goals will continue to grow.
In upgrading the India-Qatar relationship to a strategic partnership, the contribution, well-being and security of the 830,000-strong Indian expatriate community must have been a factor. They are preferred by locals for being law-abiding, industrious and form the largest foreign nationality, vastly outnumbering the local population of just about 300,000. Having a large expatriate population, however, also comes with challenges as was evident from the widely publicised case of eight former Indian naval officers working for a private firm in Qatar who were sentenced to death for alleged espionage. It took intervention at the highest levels of government on both sides to resolve the issue and ensure the return of seven of the accused while the case of one of them is still sub judice. At the high-level meetings which followed the resolution of what was certainly a serious setback in relations, a decision appears to have been taken to review the various aspects of the bilateral relationship leading to the reset.
Qatar’s broader ambitions
A key driver of the reset must also lie in mutual recognition of the other as an important player in the fast-evolving geopolitical churn in the region even if there are divergent positions on certain issues. Qatar has sought a larger-than-life role despite being dwarfed, and even blockaded and isolated for its independent policies, by larger and more powerful neighbors like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It has succeeded by leveraging its immense wealth to become a mediator, broker and key player in almost every conflict which has roiled the region. While hosting the forward headquarters of the US Central Command, the largest US military base in the Middle East, it continues to have close relations with Iran, and has also hosted groups such as the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and Hamas and leaders of various warring factions of the Middle East on its soil, taking sides and bankrolling its favoured groups, but paradoxically emerging as an acceptable mediator in crises like the one in Gaza.
In undertaking a review of the India-Qatar relationship with the aim to reset its salience and establish a strategic partnership, a glaring omission clearly is defence cooperation. While the high point of PM Manmohan Singh’s visit in 2008 had been the signing of a Framework Agreement on Defense and Security cooperation, and talks during PM Modi’s visit in 2016 covered joint exercises, training and even the possibility of joint production of defence equipment, it appears that the defence agreement was allowed to lapse at its expiry in 2023. However, security and law enforcement continue to be a part of the relationship as per the Joint Statement with cooperation envisaged in information and intelligence sharing related to terrorism, radicalisation and transnational crime. It is possible that with the restoration of greater trust and convergences, defence cooperation will once again find a place in the new strategic relationship sought to be established between the two countries.
