publive-image

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited 58 countries since 2015 and a total expenditure of Rs 518 crore was incurred on them, the government said on Tuesday.

Minister of State for External Affairs V. Muraleedharan provided details of the prime minister's visits abroad since 2015, including their outcome, in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.

"The total expenditure on these visits was Rs 517.82 crore," he said.

According to the details provided by Muraleedharan, the Prime Minister made five visits each to the US, Russia and China, and multiple trips to other countries including-- Singapore, Germany, France, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates. Some of the visits the Prime Minister undertook were multi-nation trips while some were standalone bilateral visits.

PM Modi's last trip was to Brazil on November 13 last year where he attended a Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) summit.

Giving out a detailed breakup of the trips, Muraleedharan said that the highest expenditure of Rs 121.85 crore was incurred in 2015-16 and the lowest was Rs 78.52 crore in 2016-17.

Breaking down the expenditure details of 2019-20, the ministry said that government spent Rs 46.23 crore in that year but also informed that the figure was likely to go up as bills for some of the prime minister's visits were not yet received.

A total of Rs 99.90 crore was spent in 2017-18 albeit the amount went up to Rs 100.02 crore in the following year- 2018-19.

Before the 2019 election, PM Modi spent 186 days abroad during the 2014-2019 period which is over 6 months and in 2019, although the trips have been less, the total time spent abroad is 7 months.

The minister said that PM Modi's visits abroad have enhanced the international community’s understanding of India's views on a whole range of issues — bilateral, regional and global. The trips helped in strengthening India's relations with the countries in a wide range of areas including trade and investment, technology, defence collaboration and people-to-people contact, the minister said.

"These, in turn, have contributed to India's national development agenda to promote economic growth and well being of our people," he said.

"India is now increasingly contributing to shaping the global agenda at the multilateral level including on climate change, trans-national crime and terrorism, cyber security and nuclear non-proliferation, and offering to the world its own unique initiatives for global issues like the International Solar Alliance," he added.

Meanwhile, PM Modi will take all his future trips on a VVIP aircraft - Air India One, a highly customised wide-bodied Boeing 777-300 ER. The government has ordered two such aircraft for Rs. 8458 crores to fly the prime minister, the president, and other senior dignitaries of the country.