India and Singapore on Thursday announced the signing of a key bilateral pact to partner and cooperate in the field of semiconductors, with the goal of supporting India’s growing semiconductor industry while facilitating the entry of Singaporean companies and supply chains into the Indian market.
During the two-day visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Singapore from Wednesday, both nations also agreed to elevate bilateral relations to a higher level of a ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ ahead of the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations, to be celebrated next year.
As part of his fifth visit to the city state, Modi oversaw memoranda of understanding (MoUs) being exchanged on semiconductors, digital cooperation, education and skills development, and health and medicine.
The tech partnership comes even as advanced manufacturing, with a focus on semiconductors, has been added as a pillar for bilateral cooperation. On Thursday, PM Modi and Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong together visited AEM Holdings Ltd’s semiconductor facility and were briefed by the Singapore Semiconductor Industry Association.
“India aims to establish a global node for semiconductor manufacturing and has strong domestic demand in the electronics, electric vehicles, and manufacturing sectors that would benefit from its semiconductor industry growth. Singapore’s established semiconductor ecosystem has given rise to more domestic semiconductor ecosystem players which are keen to enter emerging global nodes such as the Indian market,” the Singapore government said in a statement.
While Taiwan has long dominated high-end chip manufacturing, Singapore has increasingly become known for making low-end chips vital to electric cars and smartphones. According to the Singapore government, the country’s semiconductor industry currently constitutes about 7-8 per cent of the country’s GDP and contributes to around 10 per cent of global semiconductor output.
Earlier this week, the Cabinet approved the fifth semiconductor unit to be set up in India, under a proposal by Kaynes Semicon to produce up to six million chips per day at an investment of Rs 3,307 crore.
The pact on digital cooperation envisages sharing principles and mechanisms of governance frameworks and implementation rules for data protection, which may include model contractual clauses, certifications, or other mechanisms to enable data flows, alongside digital public infrastructure. It also focuses on enhancing cooperation between the cybersecurity agencies of both nations.
Sustainability and critical tech
On Thursday, PM Modi had a bilateral meeting with his Singaporean counterpart over a lunch hosted by the latter. Both sides have outlined six pillars of cooperation – sustainability, digitalisation, skill development, healthcare and medicine, advanced manufacturing, and connectivity, a joint statement issued by both countries at the end of the visit said.
Within sustainability, both PMs underscored the potential of increasing cooperation in the areas of green hydrogen and green ammonia, and agreed to explore cooperation in the area of critical and emerging technologies.
Both also called for an early conclusion to the ongoing third review of the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) signed by both nations back in 2005, the joint statement said. Singapore was India’s 6th-largest trade partner with $35.3 billion worth of bilateral trade, of which $14.4 billion was exports.
Modi also met top business leaders from Singapore on Thursday, including the CEOs of Blackstone Singapore, Temasek Holdings, Sembcorp Industries Limited, CapitaLand Investment, ST Telemedia Global Data Centers, and Singapore Airways, among others.
First Published: Sep 05 2024 | 7:30 PM IST
