New Delhi:
China dominating the global critical mineral supply is an area of “shared concern”, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday when asked if Beijing’s hegemony poses a threat to India and Japan.
Speaking at NDTV’s ‘Indo-Japan Strategic Dialogue’ as Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi arrived in New Delhi on her maiden visit to India, Goyal said that supply chain resilience is something that the entire world is today concerned about.
“Different groupings are getting together to assess and safeguard their supply chains in different fields. The entire semiconductor business is largely dependent on inputs that come from China today, and it’s an area of shared concern – not per se that it comes from China, but it’s a concentration in one geography that causes concern,” he told NDTV’s Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal.
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He recalled that during the COVID-19 pandemic, China had shut its border, causing “significant difficulty” to the supply chains around the world.
“Similarly, when the permanent magnets were stopped from being allowed to export, we saw turbulence in the electronic sector and that reflected also on the automobile sector,” he said, referring to China suspending the export of several critical rare earth elements, metals and magnets amid a trade war with the US last year.
“So I think it’s been a wake-up call for the entire world. It’s been a wake-up call for India,” Goyal said.
He also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘India Semiconductor Mission’ has been a success.
“We now have almost 12 major initiatives coming in in the semiconductor field. India is a trusted partner of the world, and the countries around the world recognise the talent that India has. Almost 20% of design engineers in the field of semiconductors are Indians,” the minister said.
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Referring to a deal with Nethersland’s ASML, a world-renowned semiconductor chip machine manufacturing company, he said that New Delhi is finding “very good resonance” in most parts of the world when it comes to promoting the supply chain in India for semiconductors.
It will be ASML’s first plant outside Europe, Goyal said, adding that it “clearly demonstrates that India “has arrived”.
He said that India is also receiving support from Japan, which is also “very keen” that New Delhi integrates into the supply chain.
