Our Correspondent / NEW DELHI
India’s Foreign Secretary Dr S Jaishankar today said, India’s special strategic and global partnership with Japan have witnessed an impressive expansion in the last few years.
In his address at the India-Japan Colloquium here today he said shared values of openness, democracy and respect for the rule of law combined with convergence of political, economic and strategic interests create an enduring basis for this stronger partnership.
“Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe met nine times in the last three years on different occasions and it has injected new vigour in this relationship and imparted it greater momentum”, he underlined.
He said today’s colloquium provides an appropriate forum to deliberate on the increasingly substantive and significant India-Japan relationship in run up to he arrival of Prime Minister Abe to India for a bilateral visit in just a few days.
He said as the first successful modernizing example in Asia, Japan offers capabilities and practices that are particularly relevant to India at this juncture.
Indian flagship initiatives such as Make in India, Digital India, Skill India and Startup India provide significant new opportunities for further collaboration between the businesses of India and Japan. He said both sides recognize the need to devote more attention to continuously improve the enabling environment for Japanese companies to operate in India.
The Foreign Secretary said, harmonizing the Official Development Assistance projects with Japanese investments in India can really help realize the full value of these efforts. Japan is already working with India in priority infrastructure in India like the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor and various Metro Rail projects.
The Chennai-Bangalore Industrial Corridor is the next one on the horizon. Cooperation in civil nuclear energy and in defence are two domains that portend the future direction of Indo-Japan ties.FOLLOW INDIAN AWAAZ ON TWITTER