FICCI Business Delegation to Japan Coinciding With Visit of The Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee
December 8-10, 2001, Japan

Keynote Speech by Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Guests, Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am delighted to be with you in your beautiful country and in this wonderful city this afternoon. This is the first engagement of my visit. I thank the various chambers of commerce and industry in Kansai for arranging this Indo-Japanese business meeting.

I also welcome the representatives of Indian business and industry. I thank the CII and FICCI for their sustained efforts to strengthen business ties between our two countries.

Friends, to come to Nippon is to come closer to the Rising Sun. This is the land where the Sun of the East's economic revival rose before it did anywhere else in Asia.

For many decades, Japan remained a byword for an economic miracle. It became a case study of how a nation with meager natural resources could transform wartime devastation into unprecedented post-war prosperity, all in one generation. This is a tribute to the extraordinary human resources that your country possesses.

You made the impossible possible through a strong sense of national purpose, hard work, continuous technological innovation and a well-honed art of creating a demand in foreign markets for quality Japanese goods.

The Kansai region has a special place in Japan's economic development. It is the base of your global pre-eminence in the electronics industry. It has nurtured many hugely successful small and medium enterprises. It is at the heart of Japan's industrial, transportation and communications success.

I compliment the industrial leaders and administrators of this region for their many outstanding achievements. For example, landing at the Kansai International Airport yesterday, I marveled at the engineering genius of the Japanese people. The same can-do spirit was also visible in the way in which the city of Kobe was brought back to its feet in record time after the devastating earthquake in 1995.

In August last year, the Japanese Prime Minister started his visit to India not from Delhi, but from the emerging Knowledge Capital of India — Bangalore. In the same spirit, I am delighted to commence my visit to your great country from Osaka, the capital of the Kansai region, the industrial heart of Japan.

Economic cooperation is the necessary underpinning for the Global Partnership between India and Japan, which Prime Minister Mori and I signed in New Delhi. My visit to your country now is in continuation of the same endeavor. It is aimed at not only broadening and expanding our economic, commercial, and financial collaboration, but also at infusing a new strategic content into our natural friendship in the 21st century.

India has historically enjoyed cordial and warm relations with Japan. There are distinct similarities in our approach to life as a whole. We both have a common commitment to democracy, political freedom and world peace.

Yet, it surprises me — and I am sure it surprises many of you too — that the economic and business relations between our two countries do not adequately match the depth of our cultural and spiritual ties.

We must remove this mismatch. We must do so for our mutual benefit. India is a huge country, with enormous needs of infrastructure and investment in manufacturing and services. We also have a large base of quality and value conscious consumers. Japan has a huge economy, currently with significant underutilised capacity.

Thus, there is a natural convergence between our developmental needs and your investment needs. This complementarity, I believe, can nurture a vastly expanded agenda of economic and business cooperation in the new century.

Now, more than ever before, India offers excellent opportunities to do business. There is political stability. There is a growing commitment to carrying out further economic reforms, across the political spectrum. With an annual average GDP growth of 6.5 percent a year in the last decade, ours is among the fastest growing economies in the world. The Indian Rupee continues to be strong and stable, amid volatile currencies in the region. Our current annual rate of inflation is below 3 per cent.

Despite the global economic slowdown, our growth prospects, even in the short term, are brighter than elsewhere. Our objective is to double per capita income over the next ten years and this requires a minimum growth rate of over 8 percent. We can — and we shall — achieve this higher growth rate by speeding up our economic reforms. In particular, we are committed to simplification, rationalisation and ensuring transparency of regulatory procedures and institutions.

My colleagues might have explained this in greater detail in their interaction with you earlier this morning.

I commend Japanese companies to gainfully seek business opportunities in India particularly in infrastructure, telecommunications, information technology, energy and textiles and textile machinery. We have already completed many successful projects with the help of Japanese companies. These include several electricity generation projects, as well as ports, bridges, and highways.

Japanese companies are working on the ambitious Delhi Metro project. We look forward to Japanese participation in many more such railway projects. The completion of the Haldia Petrochemicals project near Kolkata and the long-standing and fruitful partnership of Suzuki in Maruti are clear indicators of the successes of Japanese businesses in India.

We welcome your Government's recent decision to lift economic measures. This should provide a further impetus to financing infrastructure development, in turn leading to enhanced business opportunities.

Tourism in India is another area where both the need and the scope for Japanese investment are very large. Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India such as Ajanta, Ellora, Bodh Gaya, Nalanda, Varanasi, and Sanchi have always attracted many Japanese tourists and pilgrims. We will further improve facilities on the Buddhist circuit, and seek Japanese collaboration in this endeavour.

In the last two decades, Japanese investments in the Indian automobile sector transformed the face of this industry. It has triggered a new competitive culture of quality, productivity, efficiency, and work ethic in their business partners in India. Several leading Japanese companies have a strong and growing presence in the consumer durables sector. Today, Sony, National, Suzuki, Honda, and Toyota have become household names in our country.

We in India value the presence of this small community of Japanese companies and business houses. We want them to grow, flourish and become partners in our development strategy.

I am happy that Japan has been showing a growing interest in India's strong IT capabilities. We should fully harness the synergy between Japan's prowess in hardware and India's strengths in software. There are also big business opportunities in films and entertainment, animation software, music, and publishing. I am told that some of our films and film actors have become quite popular in your country.

To realize the vast potential for cooperation in new as well as old areas, we realize that we need to substantially increase facilities for the study of the Japanese language. We are, indeed, going to take concrete steps in this direction. I welcome your participation in this effort.

Distinguished Japanese businessmen, I am here to ask you all to be a part of India's dynamic socio-economic growth agenda. I encourage businessmen from both sides who are present here today to look for ways and means of enhancing cooperation. We are willing to look at any improvements that you may suggest.

I have no doubt that your increased participation in the Indian economy will not disappoint your shareholders — as indeed they have not for the Japanese firms already in India.

In the end, I again convey my deep admiration at your success. Even though there have been some economic difficulties in the past few years, I am confident that under the leadership of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Japan would successfully overcome them.

I thank you for your time and attention. Thank you very much.