Jap Investment In India Up Four-Fold

Earlier this month, All Nippon Airways Co Ltd (ANA) started flights twice a week between Osaka and Bombay, the first direct flights between the two nations. Next month, it plans to launch flights between New Delhi and Tokyo. Another Japanese airline plans to follow suit soon.

Along with business potential, I see tremendous tourism potential in India, said ANA managing director Yuzuru Masumoto. I believe that India offers tourists a rich architectural and cultural heritage to explore.

India hopes its strengthening economy and pro-business policies will rope in more of Japan's notoriously cautious investors as a result of the India Development Forum held in Tokyo this past week.

 

The forum consisted of aid agencies led by World Bank, western donor nations, Japan and leading fund providers like investment banks.

Japanese investors are pleased with the changes in India, finance Secretary Montek Singh Ahluwalia said. They may now see India as a very friendly place for investors.

Passenger traffic between India and Japan last year jumped 23 per cent over 1994, Masumoto said, prompting ANA to launch operations here.But ANA is just one of a host of Japanese firms attracted to India by the prospect of the country's huge consumer markets as a five-year-old programme of economic reforms gathers momentum.

Since 1991, more than 70 Japanese companies have established manufacturing bases in India, spreading into areas like chemicals and communications. Many more are looking to invest. Nearly 100 trade and industry delegations have visited India from Japan between last November and March 1996, said Koichi Kobayashi, director-general of the Japan External Trade Organisation in Mumbai.

Almost 250 others have made individual forays. Japanese investment in India has almost quadrupled since 1994, from an initial trickle because of economic troubles in Japan around the time India began reforms, officials said. Japan now ranks third among foreign investors in India, after the US and Britain.

In calendar 1995, the Indian government approved $436 million worth of Japanese investments, up four times compared with $112 million the previous year.