By IANS
New Delhi : Asking Japanese conglomerates to look at India anew, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath Wednesday said opportunities existed for them to not only invest in infrastructure but also manufacturing, which is seeing a resurgence in the country.
“The resurgence of manufacturing is visible in sustained interest of overseas companies in establishing production centres in India,” Kamal Nath told the India-Japan Business Leaders Forum here.
“Factories of Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda, Asahi are going online rapidly, making a range of products for domestic as well as international sales,” he told the meeting, coinciding with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s three-day India visit.
With some top business leaders of Japan listening in rapt attention, Kamal Nath highlighted the recent strides made by the Indian economy and said they could make an enormous contribution in infrastructure development.
“Our need for infrastructure is massive. We estimate that in the next five years or so, we will need $384 billion to bridge the infrastructure gap,” he told the forum meeting.
He said the India-Japan engagement through the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Project would not only benefit India’s industrial infrastructure development, but also become a springboard for the Japanese firms to access Western markets.
Kamal Nath also invited the Japanese industry to look at some specific sectors with high potential such as textiles and apparels, food processing, chemicals and petrochemicals, automobiles, electronics and computer hardware.
The corporate executives who have come with the Japanese prime minister are from some of the top companies of the country like Toyota Motors Corp, Canon, Honda, Mitsui, Hitachi and others big banner names in global business.
Others who addressed the meeting were Japan’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Masaharu Kohno, leader of the Japanese business delegation Fujio Mitarai and Reliance Industries chairperson Mukesh Ambani, who co-chairs the forum.