Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 3 June 2026 the European Commission adopted a legislative proposal for the Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) — COM(2026) 502 — as part of the European Technological Sovereignty Package. The CADA proposes to triple EU data-centre capacity over five to seven years, introduces a single EU-wide sovereignty assessment framework for cloud and AI services, and establishes common EU-level procurement mechanisms for public administrations prioritising EU-based cloud and AI infrastructure. As a Commission proposal the CADA now enters co-decision (European Parliament + Council) and is not yet law; it is structurally distinct from the co-adopted Chips Act 2.0, addressing cloud infrastructure and AI compute capacity rather than semiconductor supply chains.

As part of the Union Budget 2026-27 tabled on 1 February 2026, India's Ministry of Defence budgeted INR 1,540.05 crore (~USD 178.4 million) in FY2026-27 "Investment in Public Enterprises" equity capital for the seven defence public-sector undertakings created from the October 2021 corporatisation of the former Ordnance Factory Board: Munitions India Limited (INR 745.50 crore), Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Limited (INR 329.00 crore), Yantra India Limited (INR 228.00 crore), Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited/AVANI (INR 219.05 crore), Troop Comforts Limited (INR 10.00 crore), India Optel Limited (INR 6.00 crore), and Gliders India Limited (INR 2.50 crore). The figures appear under Demand No. 21 (Capital Outlay on Defence Services) of the Notes on Demands for Grants, 2026-2027, published by the Ministry of Finance's Department of Economic Affairs.

Taiwan's Legislative Yuan passed the Artificial Intelligence Basic Act (人工智慧基本法) on third reading on 23 December 2025, and President Lai Ching-te promulgated the 20-article statute on 14 January 2026, bringing it into force immediately. The Act designates the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) as the central AI-policy competent authority and codifies seven governance principles — sustainability and well-being, human autonomy, privacy protection and data governance, cybersecurity and safety, transparency and explainability, fairness and non-discrimination, and accountability — that apply to all public-sector AI procurement and high-risk sectoral applications. The statute establishes a statutory foundation for the Taiwan AI Action Plan 2.0, mandates an Executive Yuan National AI Strategy Committee, and provides authority for sector-specific implementing regulations by FSC, NCC, MOHW, and MOTC across finance, telecoms, medical, and autonomous-vehicle AI within a two-year window. As the first national AI governance statute in the Greater China region and the third globally after the EU AI Act and South Korea's AI Basic Act, it frames regulatory expectations for the companies at the heart of the global AI hardware supply chain — TSMC, NVIDIA ODM partners, and advanced-packaging incumbents — that are headquartered or operate substantially in Taiwan.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office designated two China-based commercial cyber companies — Sichuan Anxun Information Technology Co Ltd (known as i-Soon) and Integrity Technology Group Incorporated — under the UK's Cyber sanctions regime, freezing their UK assets and imposing controls on commercial transactions and investment instruments involving them. i-Soon was designated for targeting over 80 government and private-sector IT systems worldwide, including UK public-sector and private-industry networks. Integrity Tech was designated for operating a covert botnet of more than 260,000 compromised devices globally and supplying access to it to enable unauthorised intrusion into UK public-sector systems.

On 8 October 2025 South Africa's Public Investment Corporation (PIC) — the state-owned asset manager that invests the Government Employees Pension Fund and other public-sector funds — announced it has set aside ZAR 1.35 billion (~USD 78.7 million) to fund early-stage mining projects, from post-scoping through bankable-feasibility-study stage. Capital is deployed indirectly via private equity, venture capital, specialist mining funds and joint ventures, in tickets of ZAR 100-400 million per project. At least 50% of funded projects must be in South Africa, with the remainder earmarked for copper/cobalt in Zambia and the DRC, rare earths in Malawi, and graphite in Tanzania and Madagascar. The fund explicitly targets minerals aligned with South Africa's Just Energy Transition (JET) and carries BEE Level 2 / Historically Disadvantaged Individuals preference criteria for South African applicants.

RITES Ltd, a Government of India public-sector engineering consultancy, floated an EPC tender on behalf of Oil India Limited (OIL) for construction of a workman housing complex at OIL's Duliajan site in Assam (tender ID 2025_RITES_246752_1; ~29,400 sqm, 192 units; estimated value approx. INR 160 crore / USD 19.3 million). The tender embeds a local-content bidder-preference requirement consistent with India's Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017, giving a bid-evaluation advantage to Class-I local suppliers in the general-construction category. Global Trade Alert records the intervention as announced/implemented 28 August 2025.

India's Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), a central public-sector power utility under the Ministry of Power, issued a tender (ref. 2025_DVC_245419_1) for the lifting and transport of two million tonnes of coal that embeds a domestic-supplier preference margin under India's Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017, giving a bid-evaluation advantage to Class-I local suppliers in the land-transport/logistics services category. Global Trade Alert records the intervention as announced/implemented 21 August 2025; the 2-million-tonne quantity is disclosed by GTA, but the underlying contract value sits behind GTA's account-gated view and was not independently confirmed.

India's Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), a central public-sector power utility under the Ministry of Power, issued Tender Document No. DVC/Tender/Head Quarter/SPE/CMM/Works and Service/00077/Capital on 20 August 2025 for the survey, design, supply, and replacement of existing conductors with high-temperature low-sag (HTLS) conductors on its 132kV D/C transmission lines. The tender restricts eligibility to 'Class-I local suppliers' under India's Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017, giving domestic manufacturers a bid-evaluation advantage in the electrical-equipment/civil-engineering procurement category. Global Trade Alert records the intervention as announced/implemented 20 August 2025; the underlying contract value and full tender scope sit behind GTA's account-gated view and were not independently confirmed via trade press.

On 12 August 2025, THDC India Limited — a Mini Ratna public-sector enterprise under India's Ministry of Power — invited bids for a 53.9 MWac/72.8 MWp ground-mounted solar PV project (with three years of O&M) to be built within the premises of Karnataka Power Corporation Limited's Raichur Thermal Power Station (RTPS), at an estimated cost of INR 220.24 crore including GST. The tender embeds a domestic-content preference under India's Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017, restricting bidders to "Class-I local suppliers" and requiring solar modules and cells to be sourced from the government's Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM). GTA records the intervention as announced/implemented 12 August 2025.

India's Union Cabinet approved ₹30,000 crore (~USD 3.43 billion) in compensation to the three public-sector oil marketing companies — Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) — for under-recoveries on domestic LPG sales during 2024-25. International LPG prices stayed elevated through the period, but the government did not pass the increase through to consumer cylinder prices, leaving the OMCs with losses on every cylinder sold. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas will distribute the funds across the three companies in twelve tranches to support crude/LPG procurement, debt servicing, and capex, and to keep LPG supply uninterrupted.

On 4 August 2025, IRCON International Limited — a Government of India public-sector enterprise under the Ministry of Railways — launched a tender for the manufacture, supply, transportation and delivery of 60 kg Prime Rail (13M length) of Grade IRS-T-1, valued at INR 97.37 crore (approx. USD 11.7 million). The tender embeds a domestic-content preference under India's Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017 (as amended), consistent with the wider batch of India localisation-preference tenders already tracked in this register. GTA records the intervention as announced/implemented on 4 August 2025.

El Salvador's Legislative Assembly adopted Decreto Legislativo No. 199 on 29 January 2025 with 55 of 60 votes, reforming six articles and repealing three articles of the original Ley Bitcoin (Decreto 57, June 2021). The reform downgrades Bitcoin from compulsory legal tender to voluntary acceptance only — private parties are no longer obliged to accept BTC payments, and Bitcoin can no longer be used to pay taxes or settle public-sector debts. The State also withdraws from operational involvement in the Chivo Wallet platform. The reform is an explicit prior action under the IMF's US$1.4 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme (IMF Country Report 25/58), published in the Diario Oficial on 30 January 2025 and entering into force 90 days later on 30 April 2025.

On 29 January 2025 the Union Cabinet of India approved the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM), a seven-year programme running FY2024-25 through FY2030-31 with a headline financial envelope of ₹34,300 crore (≈USD 4.0 bn). The structure is split: ₹16,300 crore of direct government outlay administered by the Ministry of Mines, plus an expected ₹18,000 crore of investment by central public-sector undertakings (PSUs) and other stakeholders. The mission was first announced by the Finance Minister in the Union Budget 2024-25 (23 July 2024) and the Cabinet approval gave it formal sanction. The NCMM covers the full critical-minerals value chain: domestic exploration, mining, beneficiation, processing, recycling from end-of-life products, and acquisition of overseas mineral assets. The Geological Survey of India (GSI) is tasked with executing 1,200 exploration projects over the seven-year window (vs. 368 projects over the prior three years), expanded to offshore polymetallic-nodule provinces containing cobalt, REE, nickel and manganese. More than 100 critical-mineral blocks are slated for auction. Khanij Bidesh India Ltd (KABIL) — the JV of NALCO, HCL and MECL — is the designated vehicle for overseas acquisitions, with active Argentina lithium (CAMYEN SE, 15,703 ha) and Australia lithium/cobalt off-take pipelines. India's official critical-minerals list contains 30 commodities, of which 24 are inscribed in Part D of Schedule I of the MMDR Act 1957 (after the 2023 amendment), reserving central-government auction authority over them. The NCMM sets an explicit recycling target of 15-20% of domestic critical-mineral demand met from secondary sources (e-waste, battery scrap, industrial waste) by 2035. The mission also funds a National Centre of Excellence for Critical Minerals and offers customs-duty waivers on 25 critical minerals (announced in the same FY24-25 budget) to lower import costs while domestic capacity scales. NCMM is India's pull-side complement to the US IRA, EU Critical Raw Materials Act, Canada Critical Minerals Strategy and Australia Critical Minerals Strategy — a coordinated allied response to Chinese dominance over refined cobalt, REE, graphite and gallium/germanium. For India specifically it is framed as the supply-chain underpinning for FAME-III (EV adoption), the Semicon India programme (gallium/germanium/silicon), and the National Solar Mission (silicon, indium, tellurium, gallium for thin-film PV).

Bolivia's Decreto Supremo 5309, signed by President Luis Arce on 8 January 2025, mandates that all public-sector entities migrate their information systems to Free Software and Open Standards by 12 January 2030. The decree includes a data-localization provision barring storage of non-public state data on servers outside Bolivian territory; government cloud workloads must run either on public-entity infrastructure or on state-operated cloud services within the country. AGETIC (Bolivia's ICT agency) is responsible for overseeing compliance and developing the implementation plan (approved via the companion Decreto Supremo 5322 on 23 January 2025).

Loi n° 2024-449 of 21 May 2024, known as the SREN law (Sécuriser et Réguler l'Espace Numérique), was definitively adopted by the French Parliament on 10 April 2024, validated in part by the Conseil Constitutionnel on 17 May 2024 (Decision n° 2024-866 DC), promulgated by the President on 21 May 2024, and published in the Journal Officiel on 22 May 2024. SREN is France's digital-sovereignty omnibus statute: it transposes parts of the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation 2022/2065), Digital Markets Act (Regulation 2022/1925), and Data Governance Act (Regulation 2022/868) into French law and layers national-level instruments on top — most consequentially a data-localisation hook for sensitive public-sector data tied to the ANSSI SecNumCloud sovereign-cloud certification scheme, an ARCOM-enforced age-verification regime for adult-content sites (with €250k or 2%-of-turnover fines and account-closure powers), an "anti-scam" cybersecurity filter requiring browsers and DNS resolvers to block ANSSI-designated fraudulent domains, a jeux-en-ligne (JONUM) regime for cryptoasset-adjacent gaming, and a coordination framework between CSA, CNIL, ARCOM, and the Autorité de la concurrence. SREN is one of the first EU member-state digital omnibus statutes anchoring national public-sector data-hosting rules to a sovereign-cloud certification scheme.

Regulation (EU) 2022/868 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2022 on European data governance — the Data Governance Act (DGA) — was published in the Official Journal on 3 June 2022, entered into force on 23 June 2022, and became fully applicable on 24 September 2023. The DGA is the second pillar of the EU data-economy framework (alongside GDPR for personal data and the Data Act 2023/2854 for industrial/IoT data) and establishes four structural mechanisms: (i) a harmonised public-sector data re-use regime for protected data held by public-sector bodies; (ii) a mandatory notification and structural-separation regime for data-intermediation service providers; (iii) a voluntary recognition framework for data-altruism organisations (RDAOs); and (iv) the European Data Innovation Board (EDIB) to co-ordinate national competent authorities and advise on common European data spaces and interoperability standards. The regulation is the foundational parent statute of the existing French SREN law filing (2024-05-21) and functions as enabling legislation for the EU's sectoral common-data-space programme (Health, Agriculture, Finance, Mobility, Green Deal, Energy, etc.).