Actually, I am truly amazed at the tremendous potentiality and size of population in this area. As an example, it is said that Mumbai metropolitan holds 23 million people, and Maharashtra State alone, whose capital is Mumbai, has 1.15 billion populations which is almost equal to the population of Japan as a whole.

    Furthermore, half of the Indian population is under 25 years old and about two-third are under 35 years old. Such situation of India has a striking contrast from that of Japan in which Japan seriously suffered from not only its less-children and aging society, but also its reduction in population.

    Both Prime Ministers of Japan and India visit each other, respectively every year, under the Special Strategic and Global Partnership, a key relationship between the two countries. Japanese Prime Minister and Mrs. Shinzo Abe visited Gujarat State in September last year, where the depth of strategic discussion between the leaders reached a new level.

    In the economic field, I have noticed remarkable increase of Japan’s investments in this region too. We welcomed the new investments by Japanese companies and exchanged opinions with numerous local businessmen.

   In particular, India is the largest recipient of Japan’s ODA (Official Development Assistance), which reached to approximately 370 billion yen (220 billion Indian Rupees) in FY 2016 mainly with concessional Yen Loan projects.

   In this region, there are on-going Japan’s ODA projects such as 1) Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail Corridor Project which connects the two cities within 2 hours, 2) Mumbai Metro 3 Project which will be the first underground subway among Mumbai Metros, 3) Mumbai Trans-Harbor Link Project which connects Mumbai Peninsula and Navi Mumbai over Mumbai Bay by constructing 22 km bridges and roads with 6 lanes.

   In this region, on various occasions and events which I participated, I always put emphasis on three important spirits of 1) Trust & Safety, 2) Solid disbursement in construction or manufacture, 3) Safeguard of Indian people and others which the Government of Japan as well as Japan’s Corporations seriously think much of.

   By the way, it would be greatly possible to further promote such fields as ‘People-to-People Exchange,’ ‘Tourism’ and ‘Cultural Interactions’ between the two countries, in addition to the development of the Indo-Japan relationship in the above-mentioned fields.

   For example, the number of tourists from India to Japan was limited to 0.12 million people while that from China, Japan’s neighbor, marked 6.4 million in 2016. The Chinese visitors to Japan were 50 times larger than Indian visitors to Japan. The Japanese visitors to China were 2.6 million while those who visited India were only 0.22 million in 2016. The former was 12 times larger than the latter.

   However, it is expected that the number of tourists between Japan and India will considerably increase as the middle-income group in India grows. We frequently hold seminars to promote Indo-Japan tourism in collaboration with JNTO (Japan National Tourism Organization), JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization) as well as Japanese Airlines.

   Sister city and state relations of local governments between Japan and India play extremely significant roles to encourage ‘People to People Exchange’ fields.

   Mumbai and Yokohama have been historic sister-cities for more than 50 years. A Yokohama municipal staff has already been posted in Mumbai. Maharashtra State and Wakayama Prefecture, Japan have been enjoying their sister-relationship, and the latter has sent its own staff to the former. A technical expert from Wakayama had been sent to the Tourism Center of Ajanta World Heritage site in Maharashtra to perform technical-transfer on ‘OMOTENASHI SPIRIT’ (Treatment with Hospitality for Visitors) under JICA’s Technical Co-operation Program. Pune City maintains a beautiful Japanese Garden, which has become an iconic symbol of the bilateral co-operation between Pune and Okayama prefecture. Mumbai Port and Osaka Port also have close ties.

   Additionally, there is a positive movement towards creating the friendly-city relations between Ahmedabad and Kobe cities as Gujarat State and Hyogo Prefecture have sister relationship. In the future, the regional relationship might be expected to be strengthened between the West India (Maharashtra and Gujarat) and Kansai (West Region of Japan; Wakayama, Osaka, Hyogo and Okayama).

   As a matter of fact, Mumbai is expected to be the largest populated city in the world in 2050 with the population of 42.4 million, in accordance with the research performed by the Toronto University last January. Mumbai has been seriously suffered from highly dense population, creating 7,000 tons garbage/day, terrible traffic jams, severe shortage of residential quarters, air and sea pollution and others.

   Japan has remarkably contributed to the infrastructure in this region in order to improve the public and urbane transportations through the above-mentioned ODA projects.

   Actually, Japan has experienced various public pollutions and environmental problems during its high economic-growth period, and squarely tackled with them. In particular, Japan has accumulated a variety of experiences and technologies with which Japan can share in this region, including 1) Urbane Development, 2) Public Transportation, 3) Counter Measures against Environmental problems.

    I would like to welcome all of you to join with us in thinking about on the matter!