PM welcome address to Japanese business delegation

Following is the text of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singhs address to the Japanese Business Delegation, which came with the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, in New Delhi, today:

"It is a great pleasure and honour to welcome you all to this capital city of our country. I thank Prime Minister Abe for taking the initiative of bringing such a distinguished business delegation to India. I express my admiration for the ambitious vision that you have often set out in your speeches of close economic engagement between India and Japan. I sincerely believe that such an engagement, between Asia's largest democracy and its most developed country, will create an arc of advantage and prosperity through out Asia.

"In December 2006, during my visit to Japan, Prime Minister Abe and I decided that the time had come for our two countries to raise our ties to the level of a global and strategic partnership. In today's changed international system, the political, economic and strategic interests of India and Japan have never been so convergent as they are today.

"The core element of our global and strategic partnership is a comprehensive economic engagement between our two countries. To accelerate this process, we decided to establish a Special Economic Partnership Initiative. This initiative will focus on key projects in areas ranging from the transport sector to industrial infrastructure, technology and education.

"There are enormous complementarities and commercial potential that exists in a strategic alliance between a technologically advanced, mature industrial economy like Japans and a rapidly growing developing country like India's. The Japanese automobile industries like Toyota, Honda and Suzuki have located parts of their global production chains in India. We need more such models and examples of mutually beneficial collaboration in other sectors. We will do all that is in our power to facilitate their entry and also to ensure that they share our prosperity.