Demonstrate strong will to invite investors to India; announce attractive package: Japan tells India  

NEW DELHI: Amid talks of Japanese companies relocating their production bases from China to elsewhere in the world as part of Japan’s new “Global Diversification Strategy” aiming at ending dependency on a single country, Japan has asked India to announce an attractive support package including tax incentives for the Japanese companies to demonstrate its strong will to invite investors to India.

Probably, not content with the pace of the current reforms India has unleashed in recent time in sectors like healthcare, social security, and MSME, Japan has said that announcing big-time reforms might be a difficult decision but it was the need of the hour as India has entered an important phase due to new global situations emerging out of COVID-19 pandemic.

Katsuo Matsumoto, Chief Representative of Japan government’s apex funding agency Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in India, said, “Japanese companies operating in other countries, especially in China, are starting to diversify their production bases. And in this connection, we really expect India to announce some attractive support package including tax incentives  for the Japanese companies to demonstrate a strong will to invite investors to India.”

JICA Chief acknowledged that India was facing a difficult time and it was a very critical stage to fight the COVID-19, and due to the mass population size, India had had bigger challenge compared to other countries to simultaneously gain control over the COVID and revival of the economical activities.

“Under the current situation, the Indian government has passed reforms in the country’s healthcare, social security, and MSME. This is in line with the initiatives of the PM Modi to achieve self-reliant nation. It may be a tough task to drive change but India is facing an important phase to be the resilient society after this coronavirus. JICA is in a position to support every effort of the government to be a more resilient society as much as possible,” said Matsumoto while participating in a webinar organized by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) recently.

Suresh Prabhu, former Commerce & Industry minister, and India’s Sherpa to G20 and G7 chaired this session.

The JICA chief hinted at the issues the Japanese companies are facing in India, especially during the COVID-19 outbreak period.

“In India, more than 1400 Japanese companies are operating ad India is still the most attractive market for them. Under the current situation, however, the Jap companies have also faced difficulties such as a decline in sales, partial recovery of the supply chain, and cash crunch problems. Maybe in the short term, it is important for companies to resume operations smoothly. This may the common issue not only with Japanese companies but also with other foreign countries.”

Japan is of the view that the ever-emerging relationship between the two countries is yet to achieve its potential.

“The achievement of the two countries in the various sectors is very remarkable, however, we have yet to achieve some great potential of Japan-Indian relationship fully. So, it is a very good time to rethink and reshape how we can strategically strengthen our relationship.”

JICA Chief said that today, Japan and India enjoyed the closest relationship ever. He attributed the success of a strong relationship between the two countries to the current Modi-led government.

“PMs of the two countries meet every year, and they became good friends. During Modi’s first visit to Japan after he became the PM in 2014, the two governments elaborated on the relationship to a special strategic and global partnerships. And since then we have made dramatic in strengthening our partnership,” he added.

The JICA chief said that both sides were working hard to strengthening the People-to-People exchange, and JICA was supporting an agency to send Indian workers to Japan for job opportunities in Japan, although the number of Indian students who studied in Japan was very limited.

“We would encourage more students to go to Japan and also ensure that the Japanese side ensures favorite circumstances for the Indian students to come.”

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