BJP Credits PM Modi’s Act East Policy For ‘Historic’ Agreements With Japan

Modi also thanked Abe for the “Japan-India Make-in-India Special Finance Facility” of up to 1.5 trillion yen ($12 billion approximately) to promote investments from the Asian giant, mainly in infrastructure that need long-gestation funding. These are the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, the Ahmedabad metro project, modernisation of ship recycling yards in Gujarat, the Mumbai trans-harbour link, a peripheral ring road around Bengaluru, the Chennai metro project, the Tuticorin outer harbour project, the Odisha transmission improvement project, the Odisha sanitation project, the Madhya Pradesh transmission project, Ganga rejuvenation, horticulture and irrigation in Jharkhand, and road connectivity projects in the northeast.

After the Modi-Abe talks, the two countries signed a broad-based MoU for cooperation in civil nuclear energy with the final pact to be signed after certain technical and legal issues are thrashed out.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe, his Japanese counterpart, said they would run joint naval exercises and agreed to transfer technology to increase arms production in India. As he arrived in India Friday, Prime Minister Abe flagged the importance of their growing security ties, writing in an editorial in the Times of India that “in order to maintain an open, free and peaceful sea, it becomes important more and more for there to be collaboration between Japan and India, as well as the global community including the U.S”. Praising Modi, he said that PM Modi worked and took policy decisions with the speed of a bullet train, which were not only reliable, but also secure.

Their delegation-level talks a little later at the Hyderabad House lasted an hour.

Likewise, the significance of the civil nuclear deal goes beyond the bilateral relations.

Abe told the meeting that “no leader other than Modi” could have accomplished the civil nuclear cooperation MoU.

Abe had stressed to reporters Friday that a nuclear cooperation pact between India and Japan – the only country in the world to have experienced atomic bombing – would be strictly limited to civilian uses of the energy. The actual agreement will be signed after “technical details are finalised” and it is ratified by the Japanese Diet.

The Indian PM further said that the wide ranging collaboration between India and Japan, especially in clean energy and energy efficiency technology, would create solutions for the world at large.

“The India-launched anti-submarine drill was most likely targeting China”.

The foreign ministry also disclosed a plan to extend at an early stage the validity of multiple-entry visas for Indians visiting Japan for commercial purposes to 10 years instead of the current five. He stressed that the close relationship between the two countries was important from the strategic point of view. He pointed out that there were serious challenges emerging between China and Japan. The fact that the two sides made an unequivocal mention of the South China Sea – calling for all nations to “avoid unilateral actions” – in their joint statement, for the first time, will resonate across the region.