Malaysia and India are looking to enhance their economic relationship with an upgraded free trade agreement following Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's recent visit to New Delhi says Minister of Investment and Trade Tengku Zafrul.

In the his recent visit to the most populous nation in the world, Anwar and his India counterpart Narendra Modi discussed close cooperation in several areas such as the digital economy, semiconductor manufacturing, artificial intelligence, infrastructure, food security, and tourism.

"We will elevate the cooperation we have to a more comprehensive one to cover all these pillars," Investment, Trade, and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Abdul AzizHe said the Malaysia-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement, which was signed in 2011 and covers trade and investment, will be upgraded.

"Both prime ministers have given us a period of three months to respond with the areas on which we want to focus, and establish parameters for the upgrade," said Tengku Zafrul, who travelled to India with Anwar.

He said the range of topics discussed by Malaysia and India during Anwar's visit created significant potential business opportunities in emerging technologies, renewable energy, chemicals and petrochemicals, and manpower development.

Trade between Malaysia and India topped US$16.5 billion last year.

India is Malaysia's 11th-largest destination for exports and 12th-largest source of imports.In changing trade trends, Malaysia's exports of electrical and electronics products to India have grown significantly while the share of primary commodities has declined from two-thirds two decades ago to one-third of all exports now.

Similarly, India's exports, which had a big share of agricultural items earlier, now have a large amount of petroleum products and engineering goods.

The semiconductor sector holds huge potential for cooperation with India, Anwar emphasised in his speech at the Indian Council of World Affairs think tank on August 20.

Anwar said Malaysia is the world's sixth-largest semiconductor exporter and that Malaysia's expertise "lies particularly in the assembly, testing, and packaging segments of the semiconductor value chain", whereas India's capabilities in software are "almost unparalleled".