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.
SELL-OFF: Investors expect tariff-driven volatility as the local boarse reopens today, while analysts say government support and solid fundamentals would steady sentiment Local investors are bracing for a sharp market downturn today as the nation’s financial markets resume trading following a two-day closure for national holidays before the weekend, with sentiment rattled by US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff announcement. Trump’s unveiling of new “reciprocal tariffs” on Wednesday triggered a sell-off in global markets, with the FTSE Taiwan Index Futures — a benchmark for Taiwanese equities traded in Singapore — tumbling 9.2 percent over the past two sessions. Meanwhile, the American depositary receipts (ADRs) of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the most heavily weighted stock on the TAIEX, plunged 13.8 percent in
A wave of stop-loss selling and panic selling hit Taiwan's stock market at its opening today, with the weighted index plunging 2,086 points — a drop of more than 9.7 percent — marking the largest intraday point and percentage loss on record. The index bottomed out at 19,212.02, while futures were locked limit-down, with more than 1,000 stocks hitting their daily drop limit. Three heavyweight stocks — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (Foxconn, 鴻海精密) and MediaTek (聯發科) — hit their limit-down prices as soon as the market opened, falling to NT$848 (US$25.54), NT$138.5 and NT$1,295 respectively. TSMC's
ASML Holding NV, the sole producer of the most advanced machines used in semiconductor manufacturing, said geopolitical tensions are harming innovation a day after US President Donald Trump levied massive tariffs that promise to disrupt trade flows across the entire world. “Our industry has been built basically on the ability of people to work together, to innovate together,” ASML chief executive officer Christophe Fouquet said in a recorded message at a Thursday industry event in the Netherlands. Export controls and increasing geopolitical tensions challenge that collaboration, he said, without specifically addressing the new US tariffs. Tech executives in the EU, which is
In a small town in Paraguay, a showdown is brewing between traditional producers of yerba mate, a bitter herbal tea popular across South America, and miners of a shinier treasure: gold. A rush for the precious metal is pitting mate growers and indigenous groups against the expanding operations of small-scale miners who, until recently, were their neighbors, not nemeses. “They [the miners] have destroyed everything... The canals, springs, swamps,” said Vidal Britez, president of the Yerba Mate Producers’ Association of the town of Paso Yobai, about 210km east of capital Asuncion. “You can see the pollution from the dead fish.
RSS