Charting a route for IORA under India’s chairship Premium

IORA holds immense promise for regional prosperity and India must use its leadership to overcome the existing issues at the institutional level.

The Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) is an apex regional organisation that promotes open regionalism between the countries of Asia, Africa and Australia, connected via Indian Ocean waters. As the Indian leadership prepares to step up to chair IORA from November 2025 — it is now Vice-Chair — it can bring impetus to increased resilience in its governance structure. As IORA chair for the next two years, India will have three priorities: creating funding opportunities to enlarge IORA’s budget; integrating technology for data management and policy analysis, and creating maritime-ready courses with academic and research institutions using collaborations.

Geostrategically, the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is a subset of the Indo-Pacific, yet unique. The Indian Ocean, home to two-thirds of humanity, has a rich and diverse marine life. It also transports 75% of global trade and 50% of daily oil consumption. It produces $1 trillion in goods and services, and its intra-IORA trade was $800 billion in 2023. However, this region is also marred by poor development, troubled political systems, climate change-induced disasters, and environmental degradation. It also faces security challenges such as piracy, terrorism, and human and drug trafficking. These supranational issues compel the regional countries to cooperate and find workable solutions.

Therefore, as one of the oldest regional inter-governmental organisations, IORA has been working to further cooperation among its members by facilitating dialogue on cultural and academic exchanges and crucial issues such as disaster risk management. While the United States, China and the European Union are IORA’s dialogue partners, it is mainly driven by only middle and small powers and, therefore, requires a tour de force to become more relevant.

The Indian Ocean region is relatively free of the great power competition yet has its own set of challenges, including funding. IORA’s annual budget is member-dependent. Barring Singapore, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and France, the member-states are developing Asian and African economies. The budget is indicated to be just a few million. Incidentally, the Indian Ocean Commission, which has only five IO countries, has a $1.3 billion budget for the 2020-25 time frame. Thus, the funds generated fall short of achieving IORA’s growing areas of engagement such as maritime safety and security, fisheries management, disaster risk management, technology and innovation, and the blue economy.

Notably, each of these pillars is resource-intensive and requires constant engagement. One way to generate more funds would be to include private players as consultative partners as they are some of the biggest players in the maritime domain. From shipping companies to marine-related industries such as oil and gas, and marine tourism, these industries are relevant to the blue economy. These industries can be involved in maritime policy-making and also contribute to the IORA fund. The IORA has a small Secretariat with limited staff based in Mauritius. Since government-based structures and institutions have limited bandwidth for data processing, technology can be a big help in improving governance. Accounting for data is laborious with a large margin of error, and quick and efficient policy analysis would be made easier with digitised record keeping.

India’s Security and Growth for All (SAGAR) vision complements IORA’s objectives and must leverage its excellent relations with IORA member-states to develop workable solutions. IORA members, such as Australia, have made significant contributions to research in marine science and technology. France and Singapore, have their strength in marine-related technologies, and the UAE and Oman can contribute through investments in sectors where IORA seeks help. Traditional knowledge that exists in coastal and small island nations (Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Mauritius) should be mainstreamed for developing sustainable methods of marine governance. To further productive outcomes, IORA needs sustained and improved collaborative avenues.

Lastly, as marine and maritime-related employment opportunities will only multiply, industrial leaders should collaborate with educational and research institutions to provide problem statements and seek solutions, and to create newer, industry-related courses. Marine accounting is an interdisciplinary course that could help create a base for a blue economy. With the available talent in the region, scholars and practitioners are most likely to work out solutions.