Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 9 April 2026 the Government of India, exercising powers under section 4(1) of the Special Economic Zones Act 2005, gazetted a 66.166-hectare sector-specific Special Economic Zone at Dholera Special Investment Region, Gujarat for Tata Semiconductor Manufacturing Pvt. Ltd, exclusively for electronic hardware, software and IT/ITES. The notification is the statutory site- enabling instrument for India's first commercial-scale wafer-fab plant — a ~INR 91,000 crore (~USD 11bn) Tata Electronics / PSMC (Powerchip, Taiwan) joint project announced under India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 1.0 in February 2024 — and follows the Letter of Approval issued on 17 March 2026. The same notification designates the SEZ as an Inland Container Depot under the Customs Act 1962 with effect from 9 April 2026, enabling on-site customs clearance for fab inputs.

On 24 December 2025 the Minister of Science and Technology signed Decision No. 4386/QĐ-BKHCN defining the functions, tasks, and organisational structure of the Vietnam National Multi-Project Wafer Coordination Centre (VNMPW/CC). The Centre sits under MOST's Authority of Information Technology Industry and acts as a coordinating hub between domestic chip-design firms, research institutes, and domestic / foreign fabrication and packaging partners. It provides shared EDA software access, IP libraries, technical design verification, performance measurement, training programmes, and pilot-production (MPW shuttle) support — the first concrete institutional node operationalising Vietnam's 2024 semiconductor strategy (Decision 1018/QĐ-TTg).

The European Investment Bank agreed to lend up to EUR 870 million to Nokia to accelerate research and development of next-generation mobile network technologies (5G-Advanced and 6G radio access network hardware and software). The facility is structured in two tranches of EUR 435 million each: the first was signed in December 2025, with the second expected to be signed in mid-2026. The financing is delivered under the EIB's TechEU initiative and backed by an InvestEU guarantee, explicitly framed around EU strategic autonomy in mobile-network technology and support for EU security and defence objectives given the cybersecurity features of the radio networks involved.

On 11 December 2025 the US Department of State announced the inaugural Pax Silica Summit, held in Washington D.C. on 12 December 2025, at which the United States, Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Israel signed the non-binding Pax Silica Declaration. The declaration commits signatories to coordinate "trusted" supply chains across the full technology stack — software, frontier foundation models, network infrastructure, compute and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, transportation logistics, minerals refining and processing, and energy — explicitly to reduce "coercive dependencies." The coalition has since expanded to add the United Arab Emirates, Greece, Qatar, Sweden and India (signed 20 February 2026 at the India AI Impact Summit), and on 26 March 2026 State announced a USD 250 million Pax Silica Fund intended to catalyse trusted-capital co-investment in critical-minerals processing and semiconductor supply chains.

The European Investment Bank signed a EUR 450 million loan with Thales to finance the group's 2025-2027 research and development investment programme in aeronautics and radar. The aeronautics stream targets safety and efficiency improvements for civil and military flight; the radar stream funds modernisation of existing equipment and development of a new generation of civil and military radar systems and software. The EIB frames the deal as its first-ever corporate loan to Thales and one of the largest it has extended to Europe's security and defence sector, part of a EUR 3.5 billion (3.5% of 2025 financing) EIB Group allocation to security and defence.

Paraguay promulgated Ley Nº 7547/2025 on 8 September 2025, comprehensively overhauling the maquila export-platform regime established by Ley Nº 1064/1997 after a 28-year run. The statute introduces a flat 1% tax on the higher of Paraguayan value-added or export-invoice value, a formal "service maquila" modality covering software, BPO, call centres, and digital processes for foreign markets, and a 20-year renewable benefit duration. The National Council of Maquila Export Industries (CNIME) is established as the supervisory authority; a 12-month transition period applies to existing programme holders.

In two consecutive sectoral notifications, Pakistan's Special Technology Zones Authority (STZA) — a federal body under the Cabinet Division — formally declared two additional Special Technology Zones. The Khanpur Industrial Project (Mumrial, Khanpur, District Haripur, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; ~197 acres / 199,174 sq ft of existing and proposed infrastructure) was notified on 12 September 2024. The LEOS Technology Zone (Lehtrar Road, Nilore, Islamabad; 19.23 acres / 225,562 sq ft) was notified on 8 November 2024. Both zones operate under the Special Technology Zones Authority Act, 2021 incentive regime, which provides Zone Enterprises and Zone Developers a 10-year exemption from income tax, customs duty on capital-goods imports, and sales tax (under the Customs Act 1969, Income Tax Ordinance 2001 and Sales Tax Act 1990), together with eligibility for Special Forex Accounts under State Bank of Pakistan regulations (no requirement to convert USD inflows to PKR). The umbrella incentive window for the STZA regime runs until 30 June 2035, with each zone enterprise's 10-year clock starting from the date the zone developer certifies commercial operation.

Law 14.968/2024 establishes the Brasil Semicon program, extending and expanding semiconductor industry incentives through 2073 (aligned with Manaus Free Trade Zone benefits). Provides R$7 billion annually in tax incentives for semiconductor and ICT sectors, with R$21 billion committed through 2026. Expands PADIS eligibility to include chip design services and software, and calculates R&D credits on total revenue rather than domestic sales alone, encouraging exports.

Three-year export-promotion policy issued by the Bangladesh Ministry of Commerce on 25 February 2024 covering FY2024-25 through FY2026-27. Sets a $110bn merchandise+services export target by FY2026-27 (vs. ~$56bn FY2023-24 base), restructures the cash-incentive regime, and designates "highest priority" and "special development" sectors including ready-made garments, leather, jute, ICT, pharmaceuticals, agro-processing, light engineering, and plastics. Explicitly designed as the transition framework for navigating Bangladesh's LDC graduation (effective 24 November 2026), at which point the country will lose EU Everything-But-Arms duty-free access and face an estimated 10% average MFN tariff on EU exports.

Bangladesh's Cabinet approved the National Industrial Policy 2022 on 11 August 2022, replacing the National Industrial Policy 2016 as the country's foundational umbrella industrial-policy statute; the Ministry of Industries gazetted it on 29 September 2022. The policy sets a target to raise industry's share of GDP to 40% by 2027 and introduces a sector taxonomy covering export-diversification, special-development (electronics, automotive assembly, semiconductors, renewable energy, defence-electronics), priority, reserved, and controlled categories. CMSMEs (Cottage, Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises) are designated the "main driving force of industrialisation," with sector-specific concessional finance, tax holidays, and cluster-development frameworks, alongside FDI incentives including Bangladeshi citizenship for investors committing USD 1 million. The policy for the first time formally incorporates Bangladesh's informal sector within a national industrial-policy framework, mandating a National Informal Sector Database and a 2022–2027 implementation action plan.