The Japanese and Indian industry are keen to take the Japanese investment in India beyond automobiles and into sectors like infrastructure, manufacturing, trade and education. The view emerged at a meeting between the Indian industry and a Japanese delegation, led by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. Both the countries found that much more work had to be done for a comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) to fructify.
Industry body Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which had an exclusive closed-door meeting with the Japanese delegation, plans to take a 15-member CEO delegation to Japan in the middle of next year to further discussions with their Japanese counterparts. The focus of the delegation would be to bring Japanese investment in the Indian manufacturing sector.
In the closed-door meeting with the Japanese delegation, Indian representatives stressed on the need to create manufacturing collaborations between the two countries that look beyond this specific sector into process-based technology and research and development.
“Japanese investments in manufacturing in India should look beyond just automobiles and should go a step further into technological research and development. CII has had a 20-year partnership with Japan in manufacturing and we want to take it further,” said CII Director-General Chandrajit Banerjee, who was present in the meeting. Other prominent sectors that were discussed in the meeting were infrastructure, trade and education.
Besides these, emphasis was laid on involving Japanese companies into urban infrastructure, road transport and power. The case for investments into this area was made by Rajesh Shah, co-chairman, Mukand Ltd, and JP Nayak, whole-time director, Larsen and Toubro, among other industrialists.
Education was another sector on which extensive discussions took place. Japanese representatives were interested in establishing a “credit-based” exchange system with India, which it already had with China and South Korea.
Moreover, at the managerial level RC Bhargava, chairman, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, suggested enhancing understanding between Indian and Japanese management. He also made an argument in favour of appointment of Indians instead of Japanese or expatriates at the senior management level to operate Indian operations.
