The Hindu Business Line : Japan's initiatives to forge strong economic ties with India

Bangalore May 14 An Indian fashion show to be held in Osaka in July that will showcase India's fast emerging designing capability and a novel pilot scheme called the One-Village-One-Product (OVOP) that was launched in Tamil Nadu last year would underline Japan's efforts to promote better understanding at grassroots levels to strengthen bilateral trade and investments.

Designers Mr Manish Arora and Ms Hiroko Koshino of Japan would be providing an ensemble of their designs using Indian fabrics at the fashion show, which will be held during the Festival of India and Japan. The OVOP, which aims at helping identifying suitable products and creating awareness about Japanese market situations, envisages promoting products like bed spreads and furnishing materials from Thanjavur.

Stronger ties

The two events signify Japan's initiatives to forge stronger economic ties with India. Japan has lately been more open minded on investments into India that is reflected through the investments of the three largest automotive manufactures — Toyota, Honda and Nissan.

Foreign direct investment from the Asian giant is expected to double to $5 billion by 2010. It was a modest $2.5 billion till December 2006. Indian investments into Japan was only $20 million between 1989 and 2004.

Mr Kazumasa Kuboki, Director-General of Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), told Business Line that the Japanese industries have identified India as one of the favourable low cost production centres in Asia for being competitive in the global market. India's market itself is a big attraction for the Japanese investors he said, adding, however, it needs to iron out the bottlenecks like the labour and infrastructure issues to accelerate FDI.

Lack of information

Mr Kuboki said the Japanese were keen to invest in India as an alternative to other Asian countries in allied sectors of major industries but lack of proper information about India acted as a dampener.

On the issue whether Japan would look for an alternative to China, its traditional partner country, Mr Kuboki said, "It is difficult... Japan will see China plus one or two countries for investments."

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