A JBIC worldwide survey has shown that India tops the list for future investment target for mid- and long-term investments
Pallavi Singhal
February 09, 2023 / 03:59 PM IST
Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met his counterpart Narendra Modi in New Delhi on March 19 during his first visit to India since assuming office. The two leaders held talks ranging from economy to security cooperation. Kishida said his country will invest 42 billion US dollars in India over the next five years in a deal that is expected to boost bilateral trade. Kishida also said the two sides reaffirmed Japan and India's commitment to strengthen security ties across the Indo-Pacific region and held discussions over the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. India says ties with Japan are key to stability in the region. India is the only Quad member that has not condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It has refrained from taking sides and abstained from voting against Russia at the U.N. or criticizing President Vladimir Putin. Japan, meanwhile, has imposed financial sanctions to isolate Russia, including export controls on high-tech products. (Image: AP)
India is set to overtake China to emerge as the world’s most populous country and the sheer size and potential of the Indian market provides a huge gravitational push for investment, Japanese ambassador to IndiaHiroshi Suzuki has said.
“A JBIC (Japan Bank for International Cooperation) worldwide survey has shown that India tops the list for future investment targets for mid- and long-term investment,” the ambassador said at the 46thjoint meeting of the India-Japan Business Cooperation Committee with its theme Cooperation for Sustainable Society for Future Generation.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during his March 2022 visit had announced plans to invest 5 trillion yen in India over five years. As per Suzuki, about 1,450 Japanese companies are already operational in India.
“The number has more or less been the same in the past several years. However, I am hoping to break this glass ceiling and see more Japanese companies operating in India,” he said.
The next three decades will be India’s growth story
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Anurag Jain, secretary, Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, highlighted the investment openings that India provides. “The kind of opportunities that exist in India today were never there. The next three decades will be India’s growth story,” he said.
Praising Japan for moving the world towards sustainability, the secretary spoke of India’s transition. “We have included sustainability into our national agenda. The contributions which we had committed to achieve by 2030 in India were achieved nine years in advance in 2021. The recent budget shows sustainability and digitisation to be top priorities for India. We are moving at a fast past towards our sustainability goals, are in the top five of the global climate change performance index and the only country in G20 to be there yet,” he said.
India had promised 175 gigawatts of non-fossil fuel energy by 2030 but achieved it by 2021. “We are aggressively working on further increasing it to 500 gigawatts by 2030,” added Jain.
India has worked on its public digital infrastructure
Elaborating on the country’s digital infrastructure built over the past six years, Jain, who was also part of the team that designed India’s unified payments interface, said, “India has worked on its public digital infrastructure. We have paperless, cashless systems for everything we do. We have more than 1.3 billion digital identities called the Aadhaar system, have more than 1 billion mobile phones and our UPI is state-of-the-art.”
Japan has slipped in the Global Digital World Competitive Index, dropping from 28 to 29 last year, while India’s rank improved from 43 to 37.
“India will keep on improving. India has worked on its infrastructure. 5G is coming up. Data price is one of the cheapest in India. We do over 7 billion real-time online digital transactions, and are working on transforming e-commerce as well,” said Jain.
India is also working on ‘The National Single Window System’ (NSWS) which accepts applications for clearances from 26 central ministries/departments, in addition to various state-level clearances in 16 states and Union territories. It is mandated as an Investment Clearance Cell (ICC) to provide a single platform for approvals and clearances needed by investors, entrepreneurs and businesses.
“The portal is rapidly gaining traction among the investor community and as of date has about 3.7 lakh-plus unique visitors. 44,000+ approvals have been facilitated through NSWS and 28,000+ approvals are currently under process,” said a press statement by the Ministry of Trade & Commerce.
Pallavi Singhal is a Correspondent at Moneycontrol.com. With a total experience of four years, she has reported on subjects covering crime, courts, civic affairs, health & politics.
Tags: #Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal trade (DPIIT) #India-Japan
first published: Feb 9, 2023 03:59 pm
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