What can be termed as reversal of fortunes, a car being manufactured in India is being exported to Japan, the home of automobile majors like Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Nissan.
Maruthi Suzuki Baleno car being manufactured in India is being exported to Japan and it has passed the rigorous tests of that country. This achievement speaks volumes on the improving technical expertise in India.
In an interaction with The Hindu on the campus of Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad (IITH), Ambassador of Japan to India Kenji Hiramatsu said that Japanese investment in India has increased from $ 2 Billion in 2014 to $ 2.6 Billion in 2015, a growth of 30 per cent.
Japanese Ambassador addressed the students and inaugurated ‘IITH- Japan Collaboration Academic Fair -2016’ on the IITH campus in Kandi mandal headquarters in the district.
Investor-friendly
“The atmosphere in India is conducive for investment and the government is also inviting investors to come forward and invest. Being a big market India is attracting investments,” Mr. Kenji said adding that they were not averse to investing in starts ups as well but it was case-to-case.
Referring to the proposed bullet train between Mumbai and Ahammadabad, Mr. Kenji said that the process of discussions is still on and land has to be acquired by the Indian Government while technical expertise will be extended by Japan.
“At some places our trains are running late by five seconds. We are trying to address the issue. As per rule book trains are allowed to be late by a maximum of three seconds,” he said.
Asked about investment at IITH, the Japan Ambassador said that so far they have been investing about 23 Billion Yens. “This is the first investment in a comprehensive manner in any educational institute in India,” he said. The exchange programme of students and faculty members with different universities was on with funding by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
