India and the United States will on Friday sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which will pave the way for joint projects and technology partnership for manufacturing semiconductors.
The MoU is likely to be signed while Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal will host the US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo for formal talks. Goyal and Raimondo will co-chair the India-US Commercial Dialogue and the CEOs’ Forum.
“I am working very closely with my counterpart (commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal). Tomorrow we have the official meetings of the CEO forum and the commercial dialogue and we have been talking about a great deal on semiconductors and we will have a formal discussion between the Government of the United States and Government of India around semiconductors,” she said.
Raimondo noted that India and the US had synergies on semiconductor design and technology.
The MoU between India and the US would create a framework for the two nations to try to build on the synergies and explore opportunities for joint ventures and technology partnerships for manufacturing semiconductor chips, she said.
Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in New Delhi and President Joe Biden’s administration in Washington DC announced incentives to boost manufacturing of semiconductors in India and the US in order to deal with the global chip shortage due to the supply-chain disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, stockpiling by China and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The crisis slowed down the auto industry and manufacturing of electronic goods.
India and the US as well as other nations are now focussing on building resilient and diversified supply-chain for semiconductor chips.
“We are in a fortunate situation in that we are both beginning the implementation of our incentive programs, so the discussions that we've had are around providing transparency in our incentives, and coordinating and collaborating on how we administer our semiconductor initiatives,” Raimondo said in New Delhi on Thursday. “We are looking for near-term commercial opportunities, but also we're looking here for a longer-term strategic opportunity,” she noted.