PM visit to Japan may begin Indo-Japan ties

New Delhi, Dec 13: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Japan will be a mile stone in the new era of Indo-Japan co-operation, a release by industry chamber CII said today.

Japan and India are major players in Asia sharing strategic interests and upholding common values such as democracy, human rights and a market economy.

According to the release, during the visit of former Japan Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to India in August 2000, both countries agreed to 'Japan-India Global Partnership'.

Again, during the Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to India in 2005, both the countries had signed a joint statement on 'Japan-India Partnership in a New Asian Era', the release said.

The joint statement gave a new strike to the Japan-India global partnership and focused on expanding the traditional bilateral relations to those promoting security, stability and prosperity, CII said.

The Initiative sets out various measures to broaden and deepen the bilateral economic, trade and cooperative ties between Japan and India, raising expectations for further expansion and diversification of goods and services, investment flows and other areas of economic cooperation and exploration of an India-Japan economic partnership agreement, the release added.

CII President R Seshasayee said, ''One achievement has been that after a whole decade, Japan is once again coming to India as 'Partner Country' to the IETF 2007 with more than 100 participating companies with serious business plans and an over 100 member business delegation.'' Meanwhile CII Director General S S Mehta said, ''Japan is a difficult market but once the Japanese make up their minds, they are very thorough and serious investors.'' Indo-Japanese bilateral trade figures in goods for 2005-2006 stood at 6.5 billion dollars with exports from India at 2.5 billion dollars and imports at four billion dollars.

Japan accounts for 2.41 per cent of India's total exports of 103 billion dollars. While India's trade with the rest of the globe has risen over the years, trade with Japan has not kept pace with the growth in India's overall trade, Mr Seshasayee.

Japan's share in India's total trade basket is only 2.59 per cent in 2005-06 while it was at 3.24 per cent in 2002-03.

An India-Japan bi-lateral agreement may help bring back the importance of Japan in India's total trade basket, he added.

UNI

Related Stories