Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2673 actions· ✨ 90 recent

On 24 December 2025 China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) jointly issued Order No. 37, the Catalogue for Encouraging Foreign Investment in Industries (2025 Edition), effective 1 February 2026 and replacing the 2022 Edition (issued 26 October 2022). The revised catalogue expands to 1,679 total entries — a net increase of 205 and 303 modified relative to 2022 — split between a nationwide catalogue (619 entries, +100, 131 modified) and a regional catalogue for central/western China, the northeast, and Hainan (1,060 entries, +105, 172 modified). Foreign investors in listed sectors qualify for tariff and tax preferences on imported equipment and other incentives under China's foreign-investment regime. The revision prioritises advanced manufacturing and modern services and steers new entries toward inland and border provinces.

On 9 December 2025, Saudi Arabia's Local Content & Government Procurement Authority (LCGPA) issued the December 2025 batch expansion of its Mandatory List — a binding instrument requiring government entities, state-owned enterprises, and sub-contractors to source listed products exclusively from Saudi domestic manufacturers meeting the LCGPA-defined local-content threshold. The December 2025 expansion brings the list to approximately 1,444 national products across 16 sectors, effective 1 March 2026, with LCGPA targeting a total of approximately 2,000 products by end-2026. The Mandatory List operationalises the demand-side layer of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 / National Industrial Strategy (NIS) industrial-policy stack, directly restricting foreign-supplier access to Saudi annual government-procurement budgets estimated at SAR 500 billion+ across central government, Aramco, PIF-portfolio entities, Ma'aden, SEC, STC, Saudi Post, and Saudi Railway.

Bangladesh's Council of Advisers, chaired by Chief Adviser Prof. Muhammad Yunus, approved the National Logistics Policy 2025 on 6 November 2025 at its 47th meeting, replacing the annulled 2024 Awami League-era logistics policy. The framework spans 11 chapters and establishes a technology-driven, integrated, sustainable logistics ecosystem aimed at positioning Bangladesh as a leading regional trade and logistics hub by 2050. Two-tier governance architecture: a National Logistics Council (led by the Chief Adviser) for top-level coordination, and a National Logistics Development and Coordination Committee (led by the Chief Adviser's Principal Secretary) for implementation oversight across multimodal hubs, economic zones, international corridors, airports, river ports, sea ports, and land ports.

China's State Council General Office issued Guobanfa [2025] No. 34 ("Notice on Implementing Domestic Product Standards and Related Policies in Government Procurement") on 28 September 2025, effective 1 January 2026. The notice applies a 20% price deduction to domestic-product bids when evaluating government procurement tenders; suppliers whose domestic-content cost share reaches 80% or more of total product cost get the deduction applied to their entire quoted price rather than only the domestic-content portion. Coverage is economy-wide across the government's Goods Classification Directory (Global Trade Alert separately tagged natural/man-made textile fibres and yarn under this measure), with narrow carve-outs for real estate, cultural relics, agricultural/forestry/fishery products, minerals, utilities, and food/tobacco raw materials. The Ministry of Finance published implementing guidance (Caiku [2025] No. 30) shortly after.

On 11 August 2025, the President of Russia signed Decree No. 551, "On the Peculiarities of Procurement of Clothing and Equipment for the Needs of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation." From 1 January 2026, uniforms and equipment supplied to the Russian Armed Forces must be produced by Russian organisations with production facilities located on Russian territory; from 1 January 2027 the localisation requirement extends upstream to the fabrics and knitwear inputs themselves, which must also be Russian-made. The measure bars procurement of foreign-made military uniforms and effectively excludes non-Russian apparel manufacturers and textile suppliers from this segment of state defence procurement.

The Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Armenia, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan, approved the 2025-2030 Strategic Plan for Promoting Exports of the Republic of Armenia and its accompanying Action Plan on 31 July 2025. The Strategy targets a 1.7-fold increase in total Armenian exports to USD 16.9 billion by 2030 (USD 10.3 billion services + USD 6.6 billion goods), with an implementation envelope of approximately AMD 98 billion (~USD 250 million). It designates critical minerals (copper-molybdenum concentrates, gold, antimony, emerging rare-earth-element zones), IT and tech services, agri-processing, and green-transition equipment as priority export categories, and operationalises Armenia's ongoing reorientation of export geography away from Russia/EAEU toward EU, US, Gulf, and Asian markets.

India and the UK signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) on 24 July 2025 in Chequers, with Prime Ministers Modi and Starmer presiding. The agreement grants duty-free access on 99% of Indian exports to the UK (textiles, apparel, footwear, auto components, engineering goods and chemicals), and reduces Indian tariffs on UK goods covering ~90% of tariff lines: Scotch whisky duties drop from 150% to 75% on day one and taper to 40% over ten years; high-end UK car tariffs fall from ~110% to 10% under a quota; UK MFN access on a wide industrial-goods envelope. A Double Contribution Convention exempts Indian secondees from UK National Insurance for three years. Bilateral trade currently ~£42 bn / USD 56 bn per year, with the parties targeting doubling by 2030. UK ratification under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRaG) ran from January 2026, with the 21-sitting-day scrutiny period concluding 5 March 2026. Entry into force was delayed from the originally targeted May 2026 date and is now confirmed for July 15, 2026 following a UK Prime Minister announcement at the G7 Évian summit sidelines on June 17, 2026. The confirmed EIF covers 64% of UK exports (£1.9bn) duty-free immediately, with an additional £25.5bn/year in projected additional bilateral trade.

Pakistan's Federal Cabinet approved the National Tariff Policy 2025-30 (NTP 2025-30) in June 2025, with operative tariff reforms incorporated into the Finance Act 2025 effective 1 July 2025. The NTP restructures Pakistan's customs duty (CD) slab architecture from five slabs (0/3/11/16/20%) to four flatter slabs (0/5/10/15%) by FY2029-30, while phasing out Regulatory Duties (RDs) and Additional Customs Duties (ACDs) on 7,000+ tariff lines over four to five years. The policy targets cutting the trade-weighted average tariff from ~10.6% to below 6% and the simple-average tariff from 19% to 9.5% by 2030, underpinned by GTAP projections of 10–14% export growth and 5–6% import growth. Prepared in coordination with IMF technical assistance under the USD 7 billion EFF, the NTP is the statutory anchor for the sequence of Finance-Act SRO-based sectoral tariff revisions covering textiles/MMF, iron-and-steel, and chemicals/intermediates through FY2029-30.

The Government of Karnataka, Department of Industries and Commerce, notified the Karnataka Industrial Policy 2025-30 in the Karnataka Gazette on 11 February 2025, with the policy taking legal effect from 8 February 2025 and valid for five years (or until superseded). It supersedes the prior Karnataka Industrial Policy 2020-25. The umbrella state-level framework targets ₹7.5 lakh crore (~USD 90 bn) in fresh investment and 20 lakh (2 million) new jobs by 2030, positioning Karnataka as a top-Asia destination for high-technology manufacturing — semiconductors, EVs, aerospace, defence, biotech, medical devices, textiles and renewable energy. It introduces zone-based incentive categorisation (Zone 1/2/3 district classification), capital subsidies, stamp-duty exemption, electricity-tax exemption, interest subsidy, ESDM-specific top-up incentives that layer onto central PLI/ECMS/Semicon Mission schemes, and a Cabinet Sub-Committee under the Chief Minister to sanction bespoke "Anchor Investor" and "Mega/Ultra-Mega" customised incentive packages.