Japan has committed to invest $4.5 billion for the ambitious Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project, commerce minister Anand Sharma said recently. “The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor envisages investment of $100 billion and we have now decisively moved from the stage of planning and design to the stage of implementation,” Sharma said.
“The Japanese government is committing $4.5 billion for implementation of this project,” Sharma said. The DMIC is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects conceived so far, which will give rise to 24 new integrated townships.
Addressing the joint session of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Assocham to welcome the business delegation led by the Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Sharma said the two countries aimed to increase bilateral trade to $25 billion by 2014 from around $14 billion last fiscal. The current Indo-Japan trade is less than five per cent of the $300 billion Japanese bilateral trade with China.
“We have set a target to increase bilateral trade to $25 billion by 2014 and I feel that we are very much on course to achieve it,” Sharma said, inviting Japan to invest in India’s infrastructure sector .
“Over the next couple of decades, we will see massive expansion in Indian infrastructure. In the coming five years itself, we have targeted to invest over a trillion dollars in creating capacities of infrastructure, which will further catalyse India’s economic growth,” he said.
Prime Minister Noda, who is in India on a two-day official visit, said India and Japan enjoyed warm diplomatic relations and the two countries should further step up business and economic cooperation.
“We should capitalise on our complementarities,” Noda said while addressing a business meeting. “I believe that India’s middle class will be the driving force if the manufacturing sector grows in India. We can achieve greater trade volumes,” Noda said at a meeting with business leaders in Delhi. “We can and should step up economic relations between the two countries,” Noda added.
