Since the ancient era, India and Japan have cultural ties and the relationship is now being cemented through economic cooperation, said Kenji Hiramatsu, Ambassador of Japan to India while delivering a talk ‘Japan and India relationship’ at Andhra University here on Tuesday.
Referring to economic cooperation, he said, “Japan has history and tradition of manufacturing and we are keen on exploring the option in India.”
Asserting that India is the only country where the relationship is unique, Mr. Hiramatsu said, “It has improved in the last four years and it has become a tradition that Prime Ministers of India and Japan visit the respective countries at least once a year. Last year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be visiting Japan this year.”
According to him, the FDI of Japanese companies in India has doubled since 2014 and the projected public-private realisation stands close to 3.5 trillion yen between 2014 to 2019.
“In 2006, the number of Japanese companies in India was around 267 and it went up to 1,369 by 2017 and 50% of them are in the manufacturing sector,” Mr. Hiramatsu pointed out.
Saying that the investment is not only in the industrial front, he said,“We have disbursed loans to the tune 384 billion yen under the ODA programmes,” he said.
Talking about the upcoming projects, Mr. Hiramatsu said, “Apart from the upcoming Mumbai- Ahmedabad bullet train project, we are working on Mumbai- Delhi industrial corridor and Chennai- Bengaluru corridor.”
Areas of cooperation
According to the Japanese Ambassador, both the countries are also working on issues concerning peace in the India-Pacific region, terrorism, cyber security, peaceful civilian nuclear projects, defence and global warming and climate change.
