Fifty Years of Japan-Bangladesh Relations dailytimes.com.pk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailytimes.com.pk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Japanese investors sanguine about business potential in Bangladesh
ITO Naoki, Japanese ambassador to Bangladesh, says in an interview
ITO Naoki
The relationship between Japan and Bangladesh is a trusted and time-tested one. Bangladesh became Japan s biggest recipient of official development assistance in 2020. Since the Covid-19 pandemic started more than a year ago, there has been a lot of talks and anticipation about Japanese businesses moving base to Bangladesh. In a series of high-profile interviews, The Daily Star tries to understand the increasing interest of Japanese investors in Bangladesh, its growth prospects, barriers to growth, ground realities, and how to attract more Japanese investment. As part of the series, today, we are running the interview of ITO Naoki, Japanese ambassador to Bangladesh.
Introduction
In a speech before the Indian Parliament in 2007, then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe introduced the ‘Confluence of Two Seas’, a precursor to Tokyo’s Indo-Pacific policy framework. It referred to the linking of the Pacific and Indian Oceans to make a ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’; Abe named India as an anchor in such a vision.
To be sure, India-Japan relations date back to the decades after the Second World War. Their current partnership is increasingly featured as an important pole in Abe’s book,
Utsukushii kuni e (Towards a Beautiful Country: My Vision for Japan) where he writes that it would not surprise him if “in another decade, Japan–India relations overtake Japan–US and Japan–China ties.”