NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited 58 countries since 2015 and a total expenditure of Rs 517 crore was incurred on them. In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan provided details of his visit, which also included his outcome, to the query posed by MP Fauzia Khan.

He said that the total expenditure came to Rs 517.82 crore.

PM Modi had made five visits each to the US, Russia and China, and multiple trips to some other countries like Singapore, Germany, France, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates, he said. While some were multi-nation trips and some standalone bilateral visits.

Modi had last attended the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) summit on November 13-14 in 2019.

Muraleedharan said PM Modi's visits to the countries have enhanced their understanding of India's perspectives on bilateral, regional and global issues. He said the visits helped in strengthening India's relations with the countries in a wide range of sectors including trade and investment, technology, defence collaboration and people-to-people contact.

"These, in turn, have contributed to India's national development agenda to promote economic growth and well being of our people," the minister 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, as quoted by a news agency.