When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plane touched down in Abu Dhabi, UAE military jets flew in formation to escort it — a display of pageantry that set the tone for what followed: a visit packed with agreements that analysts say carry tangible benefits for India’s economy, energy security and technological ambitions.
Modi met UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Thursday, with the two leaders reviewing progress under their Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. By the time he departed, six formal agreements and three major investment announcements had been signed — here is what they mean for India.
Cheaper cooking gas, more secure oil
At the heart of the energy deals is a strategic collaboration agreement between India’s state-run Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited (ISPRL) and Abu Dhabi’s national oil giant ADNOC — a pact that bolsters India’s crude oil storage capacity and supply resilience.
A separate ADNOC agreement with Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) on liquefied petroleum gas supplies addresses a more immediate concern: cooking fuel for hundreds of millions of Indian households that rely on LPG cylinders. Locking in long-term supply from a Gulf partner insulates India from price shocks on global commodity markets.
An 8-exaflop supercomputer
One of the more striking deliverables of the visit was a term sheet between Abu Dhabi’s G42 Group, the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence and India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to build an 8-exaflop supercomputing cluster on Indian soil.
To put that in context, an exaflop represents one quintillion floating-point operations per second. The facility would dramatically accelerate India’s artificial intelligence research, drug discovery, climate modelling and defence computing — areas where New Delhi has been seeking to narrow the gap with global powers.
Billions flowing into Indian banks and infrastructure
Three large-scale investment announcements signal deepening Emirati confidence in India’s financial sector.
Emirates NBD, one of the UAE’s largest banks, announced it would acquire a 60 percent stake in India’s RBL Bank for AED 11.02 billion — equivalent to roughly 28,300 crore Indian rupees. The deal injects foreign capital into a mid-sized private lender that has faced balance sheet pressures in recent years.
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, committed AED 3.67 billion to India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), channelling Gulf capital into roads, ports and logistics.
International Holding Company (IHC), the Abu Dhabi conglomerate, matched that figure with an equal AED 3.67 billion stake acquisition in Sammaan Capital, a non-banking financial company formerly known as Indiabulls Housing Finance.
Jobs in shipbuilding, a new defence axis
Two memoranda of understanding between Cochin Shipyard Limited and Dubai’s Drydocks World cover the establishment of a ship repair cluster at Vadinar in Gujarat’s coast and a skill development programme in marine engineering — agreements that could generate employment in India’s shipbuilding sector while leveraging Emirati maritime expertise.
A framework agreement on a Strategic Defence Partnership between the two countries’ defence ministries rounds out the package, formalising military-industrial cooperation that both sides say supports regional stability.
The regional backdrop
Modi used the visit to reiterate India’s condemnation of what he described as Iranian terrorist attacks targeting civilians and infrastructure in the UAE — comments that carry weight given the roughly 3.5 million-strong Indian diaspora living in the Emirates.
The two leaders also discussed broader Middle East tensions and their implications for maritime security, energy supplies and global trade routes — concerns that bear directly on India’s oil imports and the welfare of its citizens working across the Gulf.
Additional reporting from WAM