India-Japan IT summit shortly

George Iype in Bangalore

India and Japan will enter into a series of initiatives and investment partnership opportunities in information technology during Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's first-ever visit to the country beginning Monday.

Officials at the Union ministry of information technology and the Karnataka government preparing for Mori's Bangalore visit said an important agenda of the Japanese prime minister's trip is to hold an India-Japan IT summit later this year.

"It will be the first-ever IT summit between two Asian countries. There is a perception that the Indian government's IT initiatives and the country's software firms are United States-centric. We would like to enter into an enduring IT relationship with Japan, the Asian economic giant too," a senior MIT official told rediff.com

He said the Japanese premier -- who is said to be fascinated by India's progress in the infotech sector -- is keen that the countries hold the IT summit either in November or December in New Delhi or Bangalore.

To prepare the ground for the IT summit, the Japanese government is expected to send a 100-member IT mission to India in early October. The mission will be led by top officials of the Keidanren, Japan's apex business organisation.

Recruitment of Indian software engineers to Japan, enhancing investment from Japanese companies in the Indian IT sector and Indian technology firms setting up more software centres in Japan are the other core areas Mori's visit to Bangalore will focus on.

Early this month, Haruhiko Kuroda, Japan's vice finance minister for international affairs, visited India in an attempt to attract more Indian software professionals to Japan, which confronts an acute shortage of software programmers.

Already, a couple of Japanese recruitment agencies have announced plans to recruit more than 10,000 IT engineers from India. To ensure that Indians take the Japanese jobs seriously, just as they do US tech jobs, Mori is expected to announce long term visa permits for Indian professionals.

If Japan announces long term visas for Indian techies, it will follow the US which nearly doubled the number of temporary visas for Indian skilled workers and Germany, which has approved a green cards scheme for IT workers.

Mori, who took office in April, has already announced at his meeting with Wipro Chairman Azim Premji last month that India's IT initiatives have abundantly inspired him. For his part, ever since he took charge, Mori been taking a gamut of steps and measures to promote IT-related industries at home.

Last month, the Japanese premier chaired the Okinawa summit of the Group of Eight countries. Promotion of IT-related services was an important chapter at the summit. Mori has also established an IT strategic council to advise him on information technology.

Though more than 7,000 Indians work in Japan, there are not many tech professionals among them. Japan has never been a priority for India's software exports. Except for the presence of two major Indian software firms — Wipro and Infosys — in Tokyo, not many Indian IT companies do business with the Japanese industry.

During 1999-2000, India's software exports to Japan was worth US $ 4 billion, about four per cent. During the same year, India's software exports to the United States and Europe accounted for 60 per cent and 20 per cent respectively.

Experts suggest an India-Japan relationship in IT can make the countries global infotech power houses. They say a marriage of Japanese expertise in hardware and Indian efficiency in software skills can result in booming business between both countries. Japan is already a global pioneer in mobile communications and Internet access technologies.

"There is a great synergy between India and Japan in IT. If we join hands, it will create two Asian power houses," Infosys Chairman N R Narayana Murthy told rediff.com

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