Taiwanese companies want FTA signed fast with India: Trade official

Taiwanese companies want their country to sign a free trade agreement (FTA) with India, Taiwan External Trade Development Council chairman James C Huang said. Both governments are also interested in cooperating in the semiconductor sector, Huang told ET on the sidelines of the Taiwan Expo 2025.

“While I cannot speak on behalf of both governments, as a business promotion organisation, I can express the desire of our private sector that an FTA will certainly facilitate business cooperation. Taiwanese companies are very interested in developing partnership with Indian companies,” Huang said on Thursday.

India’s bilateral trade with Taiwan has doubled in the past five years. In 2024-25, it rose 16.5% from the previous fiscal year to $11.78 billion. Imports made up $10 billion of this, rising 20% as a result of increasing inbound shipments of integrated circuits and micro assemblies, data processing machines, and a wide range of electronics and machinery. Exports shrank 3.2% to $1.78 billion.

The semiconductor sector, in which Taiwan dominates globally, offers vast opportunities for bilateral economic ties, Huang said. “Both governments are very interested in working with each other in semiconductor cooperation. I’m quite optimistic about that. Indian companies like Tata are also interested in joining hand with Taiwanese semiconductor companies,” he said.

Tata Electronics, in partnership with Taiwanese chip foundry Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC), is building India’s first advanced wafer fabrication plant at Dholera, Gujarat at a cost of Rs 91,000 crore. Taiwan-based electronics contract manufacturer Foxconn is setting up an outsourced semiconductor assembly and testing (OSAT) facility in Jewar, Uttar Pradesh in a joint venture with HCL Technologies.

The next step in the semiconductor partnership will be to expand the already burgeoning talent exchanges in semiconductors as part of B2B partnerships, Huang said. “It takes time to build up the entire semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem. But we can start from talent exchanges. India has world class talent. Taiwan’s MediaTek, which is the third largest integrated circuit design house globally, has a large operation in India and hires many Indian IC designers,” he said.

Many Indian engineers are working at Hsinchu Science Park, a global hub for high-tech industry, while a large number of Indian students have also joined National Taiwan University, he said.

Beyond electronics manufacturing services (EMS) and semiconductors, Taiwanese machine tools manufacturers are also keen on signing joint ventures with Indian partners in the near future, Huang said.

Taiwan’s Golden Valley region, home to 1,000 precision machinery manufacturers and 10,000 suppliers, is the world’s largest machine tool industry cluster with an annual output value of nearly $30 billion, according to Taiwan Excellence, an initiative of Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs.

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