“India is keen to get into semi-conductors,” MEA Secy says

New Delhi [India], September 2 (ANI): While speaking at a press briefing on Monday, the Secretary East in the Ministry of External Affairs, Jaideep Mazumdar, said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Brunei from September 3-4 and Singapore from September 4-5, and this visit comes after six years.

Speaking whether we can expect anything between India and Singapore semi-conductors’ cooperation during PM Modi’s upcoming Singapore visit, Mazumdar said that India is keen to get into this area and wants to cooperate with Singapore.

“Yes. Singapore is very well-plugged into the global semiconductor ecosystem. It has experience of more than 20 years in this area. This is an area where we are very keen to get into, and already we are seeing how we can cooperate with Singapore. If Singapore is already setting up facilities in India and there will be many other areas of the semiconductor itself which will be discussed and cooperation moved forward during the visit, we expect the visit to really give thrust to this particular area in our cooperation,” he said.

The Foreign Direct Investment from Singapore was USD 11.77 billion dollars last year.

On space and defence cooperation with Brunei, Mazumdar said that we have ongoing cooperation with Brunei in telemilitary tracking and command and we will take this forward as the technology develops and our requirements develop. Also the need for enhancing those capabilities in the various centres we have worldwide for our telemilitary tracking and command increases or changes. I don’t want to jump the gun here but you will see discussions and outcomes in this sector,” he said.

On how many hydrocarbons we import from Brunei, Mazumdar said, “In our bilateral trade of about USD 250 million dollars, about 60-70 per cent comprises of hydrocarbons. In actual terms, it is about USD 270 million dollars worth of crude oil. It is not a very large figure at this moment, but especially in the case of natural gas could increase significantly,” he said.