From Japan with Love ; Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Recently Visited India with a Delegation of 200 Ceos. On His Agenda Were Plans to Develop the $90- Billion Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor. Will This Result in a Torrent of Japanese Fdi in India?

Business Today › September 24, 2007

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Summary

It's still an emerging partnership. But the fledgling Indo- Japanese partnership has the potential to become a game changer in Asia. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent visit to India was short on specifics. That was expected. After all, both he, and his host, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, are battling domestic political crises. A careful joining of the still-scattered dots, however, points to a bigger picture that is tantalizingly audacious, though still slightly blurred on the details.

To say that bilateral trade--which clocked $6.5 billion (Rs 26,650 crore) in 2006-07 (see Downward Trend)--has underperformed its potential would be to state the obvious. Abe and Singh have agreed to increase this to $20 billion over the next three years. Japanese companies have also been slow to bite into the India growth story. With the exception of automobile companies like Suzuki, Toyota, Honda Motor Company, and Mitsubishi Chemicals, Japan Inc. has fought shy of committing large investments to this country (See Slow Start).

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From Japan with Love ; Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Recently Visited India with a Delegation of 200 Ceos. On His Agenda Were Plans to Develop the $90- Billion Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor. Will This Result in a Torrent of Japanese Fdi in India?

But the $90-billion (Rs 3,69,000 crore) Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) is likely to change that quite dramatically. India's infrastructure, or rather, the lack of it, is cited as one of the primary reasons for the reluctance of Japanese businessmen to invest in this country. The 1,483-km DMIC envisages a high- speed railway freight corridor between Delhi and Mumbai, where average speeds will be 75-100 kmph compared to 30 kmph at present. Nine mega industrial zones of abou...

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