By IANS
New Delhi : India hopes to conclude a far reaching economic pact with Japan by the year-end to tap the full potential for bilateral trade and investment relations, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said Wednesday.
“We need to ensure that the comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA) is concluded by the end of this year which would open up many opportunities in both,” Kamal Nath told the India-Japan Business Forum meeting, attended by the Who’s Who of the Indian and Japanese industry.
“We would now be having a total of four meetings to advance the early conclusion of CEPA by end of this year. The next meeting will be in Tokyo on Sep 3,” he said.
“This agreement will not be just an agreement on goods and services. It will encompass several other sectors of the economy of both the countries,” he added at the meeting, which coincided with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s three-day visit to India.
The corporate executives who have come with the Japanese prime minister are from some of the top companies like Toyota Motors Corp, Canon, Honda, Mitsui, Hitachi and others big banner names in global business.
Kamal Nath also projected a major step up in the inflow of foreign investment from Japan. “We are soon going to see an investment of $5 billion from Japan. This will be used in several new development areas, especially infrastructure,” he said.
“Our need for infrastructure is massive, and we estimate that in the next five years we will need $384 billion to bridge the infrastructure gap.”
The minister also stressed on the need for greater capital flows into the projects such as the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) Project and Delhi-Mumbai Dedicated Rail Freight Corridor.
“Apart from strengthening the country’s infrastructure, these projects will also provide entrepreneurial platform for Japanese SMEs (small and medium enterprises).”
Asking Japanese conglomerates to look at India anew, the minister said opportunities existed for them to not only invest in infrastructure but also manufacturing, which is seeing resurgence in the country.
“The resurgence of manufacturing is visible in sustained interest of overseas companies in establishing production centres in India,” Kamal Nath said.
“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.
With 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 said.
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.
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.