Taiwan and India should sign a free-trade agreement (FTA) as soon as possible as a major way to boost bilateral ties, Taiwan’s representative to India, Philip Ong (翁文祺), said yesterday.
Trade volume between Taiwan and India is expected to grow from US$6.4 billion last year to US$10 billion in three to four years, Ong said in an interview with the Times of India.
He said the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (中華經濟研究院) and the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations have been studying the possibility of signing an FTA.
Taiwanese companies have invested only US$1 billion in India, but growth in their investments is expected, Ong said.
“Taiwan is a natural partner for India if the latter wants to increase its manufacturing output to GDP ratio from 16 percent to 25 percent within the next five years,” Ong said.
Asked about Taiwanese impressions of the people of India, Ong said Mahatma Gandhi and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore were well-known names in the past and that the people of the younger generation are impressed by India’s economic growth and Bollywood movies.
Increasing the number of Mandarin teachers in India would be the best way to help mutual understanding and bridge the cultural gap, Ong said.
He also said Taiwan’s high quality, low-cost education could be a good choice for Indian students who want to study abroad.
Currently, Taiwan educates about 500 Indian students, a number that is expected to increase to about 5,000 within five or six years, he added.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
RSS