India and Malaysia issued a joint statement during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official visit on February 7-8, 2026, committing to streamline worker and professional mobility between the two countries and announcing the opening of a new Indian consulate in Malaysia.
The statement paired broad political intent with practical steps aimed at making cross-border work and short-term professional assignments easier, as both governments seek closer cooperation in skills, employment protections, and fast-growing industries.
Officials also linked the mobility agenda to transport and travel, with both leaders welcoming ongoing visa-liberalization measures already in place and instructing civil-aviation authorities to explore further expansion of bilateral air-services rights.
The commitments sit inside a wider push to deepen the India-Malaysia relationship under the India-Malaysia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which the two countries elevated from a framework agreement in August 2024.
A central part of the joint statement focused on measures designed to move workers and professionals more smoothly across borders. India and Malaysia said they would bring forward skills recognition guidelines, including forthcoming guidance on skills certification and capacity-building intended to support workforce integration across emerging industries.
That approach aims to reduce uncertainty for employers and workers by setting clearer expectations around recognition of skills and credentials when moving between India and Malaysia, while also tying mobility to training and workforce development.
The joint statement also addressed how cross-border workers get paid, with the two sides agreeing on wage settlement mechanisms in local currency. The document described local-currency wage settlement arrangements as a way to simplify financial transactions for cross-border workers.
Alongside wage settlement, the two governments pointed to digital changes in visa systems. Malaysia’s recently digitized Professional Visit Pass is expected to be aligned with India’s e-Business Visa for reciprocal short-term assignments, a step the joint statement framed as part of digital visa alignment.
The mobility package also singled out semiconductors, with India and Malaysia agreeing on semiconductor talent development that includes training exchanges and niche secondments in the sector.
Malaysia’s role in that industry formed part of the rationale for targeted talent cooperation, with the joint statement noting that Malaysia contributes 13-15% to the global semiconductor back-end value chain.
The emphasis on training exchanges and secondments suggests the two sides want mobility to operate not only through hiring and recruitment, but through structured programs in which workers rotate across locations, build specialized experience, and return with skills that support domestic industry needs.
Taken together, the skills guidelines, local-currency wage settlement, digital visa alignment, and semiconductor training exchanges show how both governments are placing worker mobility at the center of economic cooperation rather than treating it as a separate immigration issue.
The joint statement also put consular capacity and diaspora support alongside mobility. India announced it would open a new consulate in Malaysia, a move presented as a practical step to serve the Indian community and assist with cross-border movement.
The new consulate is widely expected to be located in Penang or Sabah state on Borneo island, although the joint statement did not provide a final site.
India’s announcement came against the backdrop of a large diaspora presence, with the joint statement citing a 2.8-million-strong Indian diaspora in Malaysia.
Consular services can affect day-to-day mobility because they shape access to documentation, identity services, and assistance for nationals living abroad, particularly when travel and employment arrangements require quick processing and support.
Beyond consular expansion, the Indian government also expanded eligibility for Overseas Citizen of India status, a step it described as part of facilitating greater educational exchanges.
India also announced Thiruvalluvar Scholarships for Malaysian nationals, another measure framed as supporting educational exchange and people-to-people ties alongside the worker mobility agenda.
The joint statement’s combination of professional mobility steps with diaspora support reflects an effort to address movement at multiple levels, from short-term assignments under aligned visa processes to longer-term community needs requiring local consular presence.
Modi’s visit also produced a set of formal agreements that broadened the relationship beyond mobility and education into economic coordination and sector-by-sector cooperation.
India and Malaysia signed 11 memoranda of understanding covering human resources, employment, skills development, semiconductors, digital payments, disaster management, defence, healthcare, and energy.
Among the agreements highlighted in the joint statement was a Social Security Cooperation arrangement in which Malaysia’s Social Security Organisation and India’s Employees’ State Insurance Corporation strengthened cooperation on employee welfare and cross-border employment protections.
That agreement connected directly to worker mobility, as social security coordination can affect how protections travel with workers when employment spans jurisdictions.
A second highlighted agreement focused on payments infrastructure. NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL) and Malaysia’s PayNet established bilateral digital payment linkages enabling seamless remittance and payment solutions through UPI and DuitNow systems.
By pairing wage settlement mechanisms in local currency with a UPI-DuitNow linkage, the package tied mobility to day-to-day financial operations for workers and businesses, including the movement of money connected to short-term postings and longer stays.
A third highlighted agreement addressed vocational training. The two sides agreed on vocational education and training (TVET) standardization through standardized training certifications to ensure skilled worker mobility in 21st-century industries.
That standardization sits alongside the forthcoming skills recognition guidelines, pointing to a two-track approach: harmonizing training outcomes through TVET while also setting rules for recognizing skills and certifications already held by workers moving between India and Malaysia.
In the joint statement, the mobility agenda also intersected with travel capacity. Both leaders instructed civil-aviation authorities to explore further expansion of bilateral air-services rights, which can influence how easily workers and professionals can take up short-term assignments across borders.
The document did not specify what changes might follow from the air-services rights review, but placed it alongside visa-liberalization measures that the leaders said were already in place.
Trade and economic commitments formed another pillar of the statement, with both leaders committing to expanding bilateral trade beyond the previous year’s $18.6 billion.
They also committed to using local currencies in bilateral trade transactions, an economic goal that aligned with the worker-focused local-currency wage settlement arrangements described elsewhere in the statement.
The joint statement framed the memoranda of understanding and other commitments as operationalizing the India-Malaysia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership elevated from a framework agreement in August 2024.
By combining worker mobility measures, consular expansion, and payments and social security cooperation, the agreements presented a view of integration that extends from individual workers and students to financial systems and industry collaboration.
The joint statement’s focus on worker mobility also highlighted how governments can treat labor movement as a managed channel tied to skills certification, training exchanges, and sector-specific needs rather than a single policy lever.
For India, the package placed skilled work and professional assignments alongside education links, consular services, and expanded OCI eligibility, reflecting an approach that spans multiple pathways for people-to-people ties with Malaysia.
For Malaysia, the statement emphasized the digitization of its Professional Visit Pass and its expected alignment with India’s e-Business Visa, suggesting a focus on administrative modernization and reciprocal pathways for short-term professional movement.
The semiconductor emphasis, including training exchanges and niche secondments, stood out as one of the most specific sectoral commitments in the joint statement, set against Malaysia’s stated 13-15% contribution to the global semiconductor back-end value chain.
At the same time, the agreement list made clear that mobility sat within a broader agenda that included disaster management, defence, healthcare, and energy, indicating that the visit produced a wide spread of cooperation beyond labor and skills.
The joint statement did not set out timelines for the forthcoming skills recognition guidelines or the expected alignment between Malaysia’s Professional Visit Pass and India’s e-Business Visa, but presented both as agreed directions intended to make short-term assignments and workforce integration easier.
With the new consulate expected in Penang or Sabah state on Borneo island and a 2.8-million-strong Indian diaspora in Malaysia, the announcement also signaled a practical expansion of India’s on-the-ground capacity as India and Malaysia move to turn mobility commitments into day-to-day administrative processes.
