What the Netherlands, Singapore, and the UK suggest about how countries compete for strategic investment, and what India’s semiconductor push is testing.
When a country seeks to attract or deepen its relationship with an enterprise like ASML, is it competing for an isolated investment project, or for a long-term ecosystem capability?
On 16 May 2026, Tata Electronics and ASML signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) enabling the establishment and ramp-up of Tata’s planned 300 mm semiconductor fab in Dholera, Gujarat, alongside strategic cooperation across talent, supply chain integration, and research.
ASML’s leadership points to India’s rapidly expanding semiconductor demand as the primary opportunity, with collaborative commitments across talent, supply chains, and R&D following behind.
This reinforces a core observation in international business: business potential opens the door, and the broader ecosystem decides what happens next.
The Setting
Global investment patterns illustrate why this distinction is increasingly vital. UNCTAD’s World Investment Report shows global Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) rising 6% to $1.6 trillion, but distribution remains starkly concentrated.
Strategic sectors—including AI infrastructure, semiconductors, critical minerals, and clean energy transition technologies—accounted for 44% of announced greenfield project value, up from just 16% in 2020. Simultaneously, the top 20 host economies captured over 80% of total flows, while governments in 104 countries enacted a record 229 investment policy measures in a single year.
In short, global capital is concentrating, and state policy is actively shaping where it goes.
The Door and the Room
A company evaluating strategic cross-border expansion typically considers two questions in sequence:
- The Door: Is there scalable demand or market potential worth pursuing here?
- The Room: Once present, can we efficiently build, hire, operate, and scale?
The order of precedence often reflects market scale. Small, agile economies like Singapore cannot rely on domestic market demand, so they lead with the quality of “the room.” Large emerging markets lead with “the door.” Neither approach is intrinsically superior, but each creates distinct execution dynamics.
Three host countries illustrate different ways of answering the second question.
Three Places, Three Answers
The Netherlands: The Answer Lives in the Choice
Since 2023, Dutch investment attraction has formally shifted focus from volume to value—a mandate reaffirmed in the Invest in Holland 2025–2030 Strategy. Official reporting highlights that 187 out of 193 supported projects (97%) directly aligned with national strategic technology priorities. Reinvestment by existing foreign investors grew from 19% of supported projects to 28%. In 2025, out of 180 supported projects, 100% were classified as “value projects,” led predominantly by R&D activities.
For an investor, the practical signal is unmistakable: alignment with defined national priorities is essential, and national agencies selectively filter opportunities long before formal negotiations begin.
Singapore: The Answer Lives in the Ecosystem
Singapore intentionally leads with ecosystem readiness. The Economic Development Board (EDB) highlights over 60 AI Centres of Excellence established jointly by technology leaders and the state to drive enterprise adoption. Supported by a committed S$1 billion public AI research allocation running through 2030, alongside 1.4 gigawatts of data center capacity across 70 facilities, Singapore builds foundational infrastructure alongside capital partners.
Because global technology firms actively shape these centers, arriving investors step into a mature ecosystem co-built by industry peers rather than built by government decree alone.
The United Kingdom: The Answer Lives in State MobiliSation
The UK’s Office for Investment (OfI)—a joint unit spanning HM Treasury, the Department for Business and Trade, and 10 Downing Street—functions as a dedicated entry point for high-value strategic projects. Formally upgraded on 5 June 2025 with a dedicated minister and joint department board, the unit is designed to mobilize cross-governmental mechanisms quickly.
Its mandate focuses on resolving systemic friction points—such as grid connections, planning permissions, specialised skills access, and visa processing—that investment agencies cannot resolve independently. The answer to whether a project can scale depends heavily on the state’s capacity to unblock operational bottlenecks behind the scenes.
Tensions Beneath the Surface
These policy approaches highlight three distinct mechanisms, but they also surface inherent structural tensions:
- Time Horizons: Ecosystems require years to mature, whereas corporate capital allocation decisions occur in months.
- Selectivity Trade-offs: Sharpening focus around strategic sectors requires turning away projects that fall outside designated priorities.
- Execution Durability: Cross-departmental coordination hinges on sustained political alignment across election cycles.
India as the Open Test
India presents a compelling case study of market potential opening doors. UNCTAD data shows FDI inflows into India surging 44% to approximately $39 billion, making it the 11th-largest global recipient, propelled by targeted Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes in electronics, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing. The Tata–ASML agreement fits this trend: a planned $11 billion fab, technology access across 28nm to 110nm nodes via PSMC, and early technical engagement from a global equipment leader.
Yet UNCTAD’s forward-looking indicators point to a more cautious project cycle. While realised inflows rose significantly, the total value of newly announced greenfield projects in India declined year-on-year—from roughly $111 billion in 2024 down to $74 billion in 2025.
A surge in realised inflows alongside a contracting greenfield pipeline illustrates the exact tension we are trying to explore: market size and policy push open the door, but a sustained project pipeline depends on how quickly the supporting room is built around them.
The underlying question is whether anchor partnerships like Dholera will successfully pull in secondary supply chains, specialised chemical/gas vendors, research centers, and talent pipelines, or whether they remain isolated manufacturing outposts.
A Closing Question
If market potential opens the door and the local ecosystem determines what happens next, how many host countries—and how many expanding enterprises—can clearly identify which of the two they are truly relying on?
