PM Modi’s Singapore visit has given turbo boosting to ties: HC Simon Wong 

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Singapore’s high commissioner to India Simon Wong has said that the recent visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his country has given a “turbo boosting” of ties. The Indian PM was on a visit to Singapore earlier this month. The visit came after a gap of over five years. 

Speaking to WION’s foreign affairs editor Sidhant Sibal, Singapore’s high commissioner to India pointed to cooperation in semiconductor sectors. 

High Commissioner Wong said, “We feel that even as a small country, we can work very, very closely with India on its semiconductor journey because this journey is not a one, two-year process. Is going to be a long drawn, 10-year process to grow”. This comes as a pact was signed on semiconductors in developing capacity building during PM Modi’s visit.

He highlighted Singapore’s investment plan of over $45 billion in the next few years in India. He also spoke on India-China ties, quad, RCEP, etc. Here’s the full interview:

WION: How do you see the India-Singapore ties, especially in the backdrop of PM Modi’s recent visit to your country?
Simon Wong: I want to thank WION, Because of your full coverage of Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Singapore, many people across India and Singapore get to know the spur in that relationship between the two countries. In particular, I think the upgrading of relationship ahead of our 60th anniversary into a comprehensive strategic partnership and the visit by Prime Minister Modi ji has set the bar very high for our bilateral relationship, and we have looked into several new areas, in fact, six new areas of collaboration with India. And I feel very, very confident that this new turbo boosting of that relationship can continue. 

WION: One of the key outcomes was the semiconductor pact. Much talked about the pact. How is this semiconductor pact going to help India with the Singaporean’s know-how?
Simon Wong: We feel very, very strongly about India’s push for a semiconductor supply chain, and we feel the willingness at all levels, at the Union level and also at the state level, to push through this ambition. Singapore represents 10 per cent of all chip-making exports approval. And we have 20 per cent of the market on chip-making equipment. We feel that even as a small country, we can work very, very closely with India on its semiconductor journey because this journey is not a one, two-year process. Is going to be a long-drawn, 10-year process to grow, and for India to grow with fewer impediments, we feel that Singapore can collaborate and partake. 

WION: So what next for the relationship? 
Simon Wong: I think what we want to do for next year, during the 60th anniversary, is to look beyond our concentration of investment in the southern states. The southern states are very, very welcoming of Singapore investment, and we are very familiar with them. I want to take the opportunity of the 60th anniversary to look at new areas of growth. I want to quote India’s G20 sherpa, Amitabh Kant, who said that India needs 10 states as the engine of growth. In my view, 10 is a really critical mass, and we want to look at new areas. We want to look at UP, Odisha, and MP and I think increasingly we see the willingness of Rajasthan to engage us. So all these four states, we want to do some form of engagement and understanding next year. And also next year, I would like to see more green energy ports and facilities to be put online. Now we have one in Tuticorin, and we are looking at two, or three other ports. We hope that it can be lined up by next year.

WION: India hasn’t joined RCEP. What is your position? And we know during the prime minister’s visit, many big-ticket investments were announced. So what kind of figures are you looking at?
Simon Wong: Of course, for Singapore, which is very, very trade-based, and we like FTAs, both sub-regional or bilateral, we always have high hopes for India to join RCEP, but we fully understand where India is coming from. We are most willing to wait for India to reconsider RCEP, but at the same time, India is looking at other FTAs, like GCC, which is really a good thing for India. Number two, I think, big-ticket investments coming up, Prime Minister Modi ji, in his roundtable with 18 of our key Singapore businesses, is kindly of pleasantly surprised when all of them basically told Prime Minister Modi ji that they will double or triple their investments in India in the next three to five years. So if I look at the figures, on the average, we do 15 billion US dollars a year of investment here. If I double or triple it, it will be very, very close to $45 billion to $50 billion. So I hope we are successful in pushing this investment.

WION: So my last question to you is, international affairs, India-China relationship. What’s your view? Because Singapore has good relationships with both India and China.
Simon Wong: My own view as a small country is that big countries should collaborate and have good relationships with each other. So as friends of both China and India, we want to see a better relationship between the two, between our two big neighbours of ours. And I feel that there are really some green shoots coming up in the discussion. There are high-level discussions between China and India. Hopefully, there is going to be a top level discussion coming up soon, and I hope some of these pain points can be resolved diplomatically.

WION: Your sense on Quad?
Simon Wong: My sense of Quad is a work in progress, and I think many of the Quad countries are looking ahead at security collaboration, security views, and linking the Indo-Pacific area, we welcome that as a sub-regional kind of forum to talk about things. For me, for Singapore, my central point of gravity is always ASEAN, and we feel that ASEAN as the centrality is very big and important in this part of the world as an anchor point of solution.