On 6th October, Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in Chennai, Taiwan’s overseas mission in southern India, hosted a dinner reception at Taj Coromandel celebrating Taiwan’s 111th National Day. In his opening remarks, Director-General Ben Wang recounted the recent development of Taiwan-India relations anticipating ever closer bilateral cooperations to achieve the greatest potential in economic growth for both sides.
According to Wang, the people and government of Taiwan has shown a great amount of unity and resilience in the face of either Covid-19 pandemic or military threats from China. He stressed that Taiwan is a responsible member in the global community with a commitment to contributing to the regional peace, prosperity and development; while in the era of post-pandemic, Taiwan is developing new strategies to kickstart new momentum for post-pandemic economic recovery. Wang is promoting the establishment of Taiwan Cluster in southern India to bolster trade and investment relations.
“To attract foreign investments, state governments of the southern India have offered enticing incentives,” Wang said, adding that “the industrial corridor from Bangaluru to Chennai is home to Taiwan’s key manufacturers, for example Apple suppliers like Foxxcon, Wistron, Pegatron, Avary Technology and Taiwan Surface Mounting Technology, renown foot ware producers like Fengtay and Apache.”
Wang stated that Taiwan is the leading country in semi-conductor manufacturing dominating the production of critical EV components and for this the southern Indian states has opened their arms, especially post-pandemically, welcoming Taiwanese investors to set up operations in their respective state and rendered support to the formation of Taiwan Cluster. Wang pointed out that the US-China trade tension has helped pull out a few tech-manufacturers from China moving to Vietnam where it has brought impacts on the local labor-intensive sectors. He sees the trend of labor-intensive manufacturers moving from Vietnam to India and estimates that within the next year scores of factories will be set up creating more than one laks job opportunity.
“In the post-pandemic era, the restructure of global supply chain has begun,” said Wang and noted that “Taiwan is focusing on economic recovery and restructure under the ‘New South Bound Policy’, meanwhile the US is promoting “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” relocating the world factory from China to ASEAN countries and India.” He praised India as the best destination for the move.
Wang mentioned that he had had opportunities to meet five chief ministers from the southern India over the past two years and was deeply touched by warm receptions given to him. He emphasized that, sharing the same values and ideals, Taiwan and India are complimentary in economic development. In his conclusion, Wang called on the southern state governments to devise more incentives to further encourage foreign investments. He is sure that an increasing number of Taiwanese investors will come to India and the forming of industrial eco-system will without doubt strengthen the mutual beneficial relations between Taiwan and India.
