PM's foreign trips helped put forward India's viewpoint, shape agenda

An expenditure of little over Rs 239 crore was incurred in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to various foreign countries in the last five years, according to details provided by the govt

An expenditure of little over Rs 239 crore was incurred in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to various foreign countries in the last five years, according to details provided by the government in Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said these visits have enhanced understanding of India's perspectives on regional and global issues among its foreign partners at the highest level.

"The objective of the prime minister's visits abroad has been to foster closer relations with foreign countries and promote India's engagements at regional and global level," he said.

Muraleedharan was replying to a question in Rajya Sabha on the prime minister's visits, their outcomes and details of expenditure incurred on each of the visits in the last five years.

The minister said such visits are an important means by which India serves its national interest and implements foreign policy objectives.

"Understandings reached during these visits have enabled India to strengthen relations with partner countries and put forward India's viewpoint and shape the global agenda on global issues such as reformed multilateralism, climate change, transnational crime, terrorism, cyber-security, etc," he said.

In his written reply, Muraleedharan provided details of Modi's visit beginning his three trip to Philippines in November 2017.

He gave details of the composition of delegations accompanying the prime minister in each of the 36 trips while expenditure was provided for 31 visits.

According to the details, nine of the 36 trips involved Modi's visits to two or more countries.

The minister said the expenditures on account of the prime minister's visits to Bangladesh (March 26-27, 2021), the US (September 22-26, 2021), Italy and the UK (October 29 to November 2, 2021) were met from the budget head of the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The expenditure incurred on these three visits are among the five trips whose expenses were not mentioned in the list. The other two were his visit to Bhutan in August 2019 and Nepal in May this year.

The total expenditure in the 31 trips comes to Rs 239,04,08,625, according to the details.

According to the details, a maximum of Rs 23,27,09,000 was incurred on the prime minister's visit to the US from September 21 to 28, 2019 while a minimum of Rs 23,86,536 was spent on his trip to Japan from September 26 to 28 this year.