He noted that cars made in India will be exported to Japan for the first time. Modi explained this will be different from the electronic visa facility extended globally.
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However, he said that a stronger India was in the interest of Japan and vice versa.
India, which has 22 nuclear power plants, has ambitious plans to quadruple its present 5,000 megawatts of nuclear power to 20,000 megawatts by 2020 to fuel the energy demands of its booming economy.
Narendra Modi, and the Prime Minister of Japan, Mr. Shinzo Abe, addressed the India-Japan Business Leaders Forum in New Delhi on December 12. “It will become an engine of economic transformation in India”, Modi said in a speech, according to Reuters. In a world of intense worldwide engagements, few visits are truly historic or change the course of a relationship.
Other major priorities during Abe’s three-day visit include discussions on a civil nuclear agreement, military purchases for India’s armed forces, and Japanese aid to upgrade India’s creaking infrastructure. The added option of American nuclear technology manufacturers and indeed Japanese ones will mean competitively-priced nuclear reactors for India.
Regarding reprocessing, Jaishanker said that it has been a long standing position of India that reprocessing was an integral part of the its nuclear programme because the manner in which it ran its nuclear programme it needed the spent fuel to be reprocessed and not allow it to accumulate.
“Japan didn’t want to lose this deal”, University of Adelaide Centre for Asian Studies academic Purnendra Jain said by e-mail.
The Indian prime minister said, “I know the significance of this decision for Japan and assure you that India deeply respects this decision and will honor our shared commitment”.
With the key part of the agreement done, the technical and legal aspects of the deal will be now examined by experts and an administrative arrangement will be worked out at a later stage.
“I would hesitate to put a timeline because I am not conversant with the Japanese internal procedures and their timelines”, Jaishanker said.
In his briefing, Hong reacted mildly to references to the disputed South China Sea in the talks between Abe and Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as the agreement between the two countries to further civil nuclear cooperation.
Modi added that India and Japan should move ahead not just in the sphere of high-speed trains, but also for “high-speed growth”.
The bullet train network will link Indias financial hub, Mumbai with Ahmedabad in Gujarat. Modi said India values its special strategic and global partnership with Japan and it enjoys unmatched goodwill and political consensus in India.
“As of now we have agreed in-principle”.
The railway deal-which comes with financing worth $12 billion on terms Mr. Modi described as “very easy”-also represents a boon for Japanese business, which has suffered embarrassing losses to China in bids for bullet-train contracts in Indonesia and Thailand”.
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The annual India-Japan summit also saw Modi and Abe agreeing to step up security and defence cooperation, and inking two agreements, which would pave the way for transfer of defence equipment and technology between the two nations.
