Japanese city of Yokohama woos Indian investors

Bangalore, Oct 28(UNI) Yokohama, the second largest international city of Japan will have an Indian International School with Central Board of Secondary Ecucation (CBSE) in 2008 in a bid to attract Indian invetors and IT experts to the city.

Addressing the gathering the representatives of the Indian IT and other related companies organised by the Bangalore Chamber of Industries and Commerce(BCIC) yesterday the Yokohama Mayor Hiroshi Nakada said last night that the Global International School would be operational by 2008.

He said Yokohama city, the town of Bullet train station and semiconductor designers, was situated close to Tokyo and offered attractive business environment particularly to IT and Mechatronics companies. To city with over 36 million population housed over 2000 IT companies with over 83,921 technical experts and workers.

Mr Nakada said excellent business facilities for foreign companies, lower cost and excellent living environment and an excellent access to Haneda Airport, which is scheduled to start serving international routes were some of the major attractions of the city. Along with some of the highest level corporate location incentive programs in Japan, Yokohama also offered a diverse menu of corportive investment assistance schemes.

The BCIC president Ramesh Kedilaya said the commercial ties between India and Japan had a long history and Bangalore housed some top Japanese companies. Two IT majors of the Country based from Bangalore also have operations in Japan. However compared to ASEAN and China the Japan's FDI into India was not encouraging and it should be increased further. While Japan had nearly 50 billion US dollar investment in China and over 82 billion US Dollar in ASEAN countries the investment into India was only around 3 billion US Dollars. "Japan should think at India very seriously for making investments as India has many attractions in terms of cost and the huge market which no longer can be ignored by any economic power" he said.

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