TOKYO, May 26: On the eve of his visit here, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has hoped that India and Japan will reach an early agreement on civil nuclear energy cooperation even as he acknowledged that there are “problems” in Japan on the issue.
Singh, who is undertaking a three-day visit to Japan from tomorrow, will hold wide-ranging talks with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe on Wednesday on the entire gamut of bilateral ties with special focus on giving boost to cooperation in defence, economic, energy and other areas.
“It will be my effort to use this visit to strengthen our strategic and global partnership, which also includes trying to reach an agreement with regard to civil nuclear energy cooperation,” Singh told Japanese reporters in an interview ahead of his visit.
“I do recognise there are problems in Japan and there are elections to the upper house which take place later this year. But, I do hope that we can make progress in the civil nuclear energy cooperation,” Singh was quoted as saying by Japan’s Kyodo news agency.
Negotiations for the civil nuclear cooperation agreement have not made much headway since Japan was struck by Fukushima nuclear disaster in March, 2011.
While Japan has backed the Indo-US nuclear deal and the exemptions given to India from international technology sanctions, successive governments in Tokyo have found the going tough in garnering political support for it in the face of stiff opposition from the non-proliferation lobby here.
Singh said both sides will use the visit to review overall Indo-Japan relations.
“In India and in Japan there is an all-round agreement that our two countries must have a robust strategic and global partnership,” he said.
This is the postponed annual summit between the two Prime Ministers which was originally scheduled for November last year. The visit was deferred in view of the announcement of general elections in December last year.
National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, Pulok Chatterjee, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister, and other senior officials are accompanying Singh.
A top Indian official said discussions on the civil nuclear cooperation agreement have been given “some impetus” recently.
“There are a number of stages we will have to go through before we reach a signature,” Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai said in New Delhi.
Safety is one of the key issues from the Indian side in the negotiations for such a pact.
The two Prime Ministers will take stock of the India-Japan Strategic and Global Partnership and discuss how to further strengthen it.
During the interview, Singh also called on Japanese industry to contribute towards India’s economic growth.
“I invite the business community of Japan to take full advantage of enormous opportunities at our opening up a liberalised Indian economy,” he said, adding there is an “enormous” scope for Japanese companies to invest in India, particularly in manufacturing and clean and renewable energy.
“We require robust participation of Japanese business and Japanese industries in India’s economic development. Today, we have more Japanese companies operating in India than ever before. But, in terms of their contribution to the Indian growth process, much needs to be done.”
India-Japan bilateral trade in 2011-12 reached USD 18.43 billion, showing an increase of 34.33 per cent over 2010-2011, when the total bilateral trade was USD 13.72 billion. India’s exports to Japan grew by 24.36 per cent as against the growth of 40.20 per cent in its imports from Japan in 2011-12.
“We have plans to invest about USD 1 trillion in infrastructure in the 12th five-year plan; that is 2012-2017. And I see an enormous role for the Japanese industry to contribute not only to infrastructure development of India, but also to accelerate the tempo of the manufacturing sector in India’s economy,” Singh said.
“We have the shining example of Maruti Suzuki, but more such examples could be created. We would like to see Japanese investments in energy — clean energy, renewable energy. We would like Japan to repeat what Japan has done for Delhi Metro Rail, we would like more such Metro Railways to come up in our metropolitan cities, and in all these areas I see enormous opportunities to strengthen cooperation between India and Japan,” Singh said.
To help Japanese and other foreign investors, he said, India has set up the Cabinet Committee on Investments to look at precisely the bottlenecks that hampered the growth of infrastructure sector.
“We have to increase the investment in infrastructure, which has been a big bottleneck, which has held up our growth process. We would like to remove these bottlenecks,” he said, adding the Indian economy is to grow 6-6.5 per cent this financial year and could achieve an 8 per cent growth rate in next couple of years. (PTI)
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