India is on track to approve a bid by Swedish furniture giant IKEA to open its trademark blue-and-yellow stores in the country as it seeks big new markets for its flat-pack products, a minister said.
Last month the Foreign Investment Promotion Board rejected 15 of IKEA’s 30 product lines, underscoring the regulatory hurdles faced by foreign stores hoping to enter the Indian market.
However, after complaints from IKEA over the curbs, Indian Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said late on Wednesday that the government has taken a “favorable view” of its request and the process of formal approval is under way.
IKEA had told the Indian government the company must be allowed to retain its “global model” in India, retailing all of its products and running its in-store restaurants as it does in every country where it has operations.
“We accept their global model,” Sharma said in a statement, adding: “We see no reason why their global model has to be changed in any manner.”
The investment panel is due to take up IKEA’s new proposal at a meeting next week.
IKEA’s entry into India — it has pledged to invest US$1.9 billion in coming years — is being closely watched as a test case for how a large foreign corporation negotiates India’s byzantine rules and red tape.
The government in September announced a string of pro-market and investor-friendly reforms that relaxed or removed barriers to foreign retailers.
IKEA hopes to open 25 stores in India through a 100 percent-owned unit, Ingka Holding, as part of a wider push into emerging markets like China and Russia.
IKEA said in an e-mailed statement yesterday that it had no immediate comment on Sharma’s statements and it was awaiting the outcome of government deliberations on its application.
However, it added that it was “confident that the Indian government will support IKEA’s application as per the IKEA concept.”
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