India inaugurated a multibillion-dollar airport terminal in New Delhi yesterday — a shiny glass and steel symbol of the country’s aspirations as an emerging global power.
The state-of-the-art hub, which cost nearly US$3 billion and can handle 34 million passengers a year, was showcased at a special ceremony by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ahead of its opening to the public later this month.
Built in just 37 months to coincide with New Delhi’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games in October, the terminal sprawls over 4km² and boasts 97 automated walkways and 78 airbridges.
“This is a demonstration of what India is truly capable of,” Indian Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said at the inauguration ceremony at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, which was also attended by Indian National Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi.
The facility, on which nearly 40,000 workmen toiled at the height of construction, is India’s third world-class airport after Hyderabad and Bangalore, but dwarfs both.
“It’s an advertisement of India’s ability to create world-class infrastructure,” said economist D.H. Pai Panandiker, who heads the independent RPG Goenka Foundation in New Delhi, a private economic think tank.
As Asia’s third-largest economy after China and Japan, India urgently needs to upgrade its dilapidated transport infrastructure, including ports and roads, which is seen as a major hurdle to accelerating economic expansion.
“Overcoming our infrastructure handicaps will remove some of the major handicaps to faster growth,” Panandiker said.
India’s airline passenger traffic rates are among the world’s highest and are expected to double over the next five years.
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (better known as Foxconn) ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose 60 places to reach No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc. at 348th, Pegatron Corp. at 461st, CPC Corp., Taiwan at 494th and Wistron Corp. at 496th. According to Fortune, the world’s
NEW PRODUCTS: MediaTek plans to roll out new products this quarter, including a flagship mobile phone chip and a GB10 chip that it is codeveloping with Nvidia Corp MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday projected that revenue this quarter would dip by 7 to 13 percent to between NT$130.1 billion and NT$140 billion (US$4.38 billion and US$4.71 billion), compared with NT$150.37 billion last quarter, which it attributed to subdued front-loading demand and unfavorable foreign exchange rates. The Hsinchu-based chip designer said that the forecast factored in the negative effects of an estimated 6 percent appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the greenback. “As some demand has been pulled into the first half of the year and resulted in a different quarterly pattern, we expect the third quarter revenue to decline sequentially,”
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
DIVERSIFYING: Taiwanese investors are reassessing their preference for US dollar assets and moving toward Europe amid a global shift away from the greenback Taiwanese investors are reassessing their long-held preference for US-dollar assets, shifting their bets to Europe in the latest move by global investors away from the greenback. Taiwanese funds holding European assets have seen an influx of investments recently, pushing their combined value to NT$13.7 billion (US$461 million) as of the end of last month, the highest since 2019, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Over the first half of this year, Taiwanese investors have also poured NT$14.1 billion into Europe-focused funds based overseas, bringing total assets up to NT$134.8 billion, according to data from the Securities Investment Trust and Consulting Association (SITCA),
RSS