Australia is now “ready” to export uranium to India after the two countries finalized the “Administrative Arrangement” that seeks to operationalise their long-delayed civil nuclear pact signed in 2014. The administrative arrangement will allow Australian uranium to be exported to India at a commercial scale, however, the first step in that direction will be signing of commercial pacts between the private sector players on both sides.
The agreement was signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Australia from July 8-10 to co-chair the India-Australia Annual Summit along with Australia PM Anthony Albanese.
“The treaty that was done 12 years ago set the framework for that but the underlying administrative arrangement hadn’t been done. Those allow the operationalization of the treaty and to bring exports forward,” Australia’s High Commissioner Philip Green told StratNews Global in an exclusive interview.
“Now the actual exports will happen between commercial parties and what I now expect to happen is that buyers of uranium in India will engage with sellers in Australia. We now have the mechanism to make sure that those exports can happen according to due safeguards which is vitally important for the people of Australia and the people of India to know.”
He said Australia is aware of India’s plans to take giant strides in nuclear energy in order to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels. Australia boasts of having the largest single reserve uranium in the world, exporting to Japan, Korea, UK and the European Union among others.
“India is an important market and as India’s nuclear ambitions go forward we expect that there will sales,” Green said, adding the delay in operationalising deal happened due to rules on safeguards. “What was important to us is that that could happen according to safeguards which would satisfy the interests of Australia and its people and also uh India and its people and now we have that in place. We’re ready to go,” he added.
Defence Partnership
During Modi’s visit to Melbourne earlier this month, both sides had signed a joint declaration on defence and security cooperation in order to take their Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP), which was signed in 2020, to the next level.
Both sides have vowed to strengthen their defence partnership in the maritime domain – in a more stronger way than it is done currently. An India-Australia Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap was also announced under the joint declaration.
“We face a region which is undergoing considerable flux and in Australia’s case we perceive a region where our security interests are more challenged. That means we have to do more domestically to strengthen our security. It also means that we have to engage more deeply with the partners that we can trust and India is a major country in the region and a country with which we have a high level of trust and so it makes sense to strengthen the bonds between us,” said Green.
“Australia’s and India’s strategic interests intersect most is where our geographies intersect and that is in the eastern Indian Ocean. And so the purpose of this maritime domain awareness roadmap is to strengthen the capacity for us to work together to understand what is happening in the Indian Ocean, to share more, to be more interoperable so that we can make sure that we take advantage of each other’s capabilities and including our offshore territories,” he added.
Canberra and New Delhi have now also decided to expand aircraft deployments from each other’s territories and collaborate more closely in the Indo-Pacific.
“For Australia the focus on the Indo-Pacific is a constant. That has been there for several years. What is changing is that we see our strategic circumstances deteriorating and that means that we need to work harder independently to strengthen our security,” he said.
“But it also means that we need to work harder with those countries that have the capacity to make a positive difference to the security of the Indo-Pacific and with whom we share strategic trust. And, Japan and India are very high, as well as the United States, are very high on that list.”
Good Deal Important
According to Green, India and Australia are on track negotiating the proposed Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA).
“We are negotiating the second phase of the free trade agreement which we call CECA. I’m not going to put a timeline on when we’re going to do it. It’s really important that we get a good deal, not a quick deal,” said Green, adding that both the Indian and Australian negotiators are meeting on a regular basis to take the negotiations forward.
The CECA is essentially going to be a larger trade agreement after a preliminary pact called the India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) which became operational in December 2022.
“I would like to see a free trade agreement which makes the pathway for Australian critical minerals to flow to India direct and simple,” said the Australian envoy highlighting the fact that Australia is the world’s largest producer of Lithium.
India is Australia’s fifth largest trading partner with two-way trade in goods and services valued at $54.4 billion in FY2024-25.
During Modi’s visit there, it was decided that the talks will be expedited even as Australia is seeking greater market access in India’s agricultural sector too.
Both sides are also separately negotiating a bilateral investment deal.
