Japanese companies may skip the first ‘Made in India Week’ to be held in Mumbai next month as they don’t want to participate in an ‘image building exercise’ and rather concentrate on setting up industrial townships in various cities in India, a foreign official said.
Naoyoshi Noguchi, the chief director general of Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) told The Hindu that the poor response from Japanese firms could be because they are currently focused on setting up 12 ‘Japan Industrial Townships’ across nine states in India.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had last month announced a $11 billion ‘Make In India’ fund, mainly to back the India-related operations of Japanese corporations. Japanese firms, citing time constraints, have so far not shown much interest in taking part in it, while there was an encouraging response from US, Europe, China, Taiwan and Korea, official sources said.
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They added that separate pavilions are being set up for companies from Sweden (companies including Ikea, Saab, Volvo and Ericsson), Germany (firms such as Thyssenkrupp AG and Merck) and Korea (Hyundai, LG and Samsung).
The ‘Make In India Week’ event in Mumbai will feature innovative products and manufacturing processes. It will showcase the potential of Indian and global companies as well as states in the manufacturing sector.
Mr. Noguchi said work on setting up industrial townships was progressing. These townships will be in the form of integrated industrial parks with world-class infrastructure facilities and plug-in-play facilities for factories, with the states offering many incentives for Japanese firms.
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These incentives include power, roads, water and single window clearance, and in most cases exemptions of stamp duty, entry tax, land acquisition tax and electricity duty. Some of these states have also assured to make land acquisition easier and bring in better labour laws.