We will soon see Japan activity in the country in the areas of green energy/hydrogen, travel and leisure development, infrastructure projects, and high-tech, space, or biotechnology investments. And all this is the result of an orchestrated national hard work and another successful business mission.
The global crises that will followed hampered our work to a certain extent. But efforts have continued and we have already acquired investments from private companies, such as Hitachi, which has committed to the Thessaloniki metro, or Japan Tobacco Company, which has invested in Xanthi.
The example of Japan
We recently returned from the three-day business mission in order to Tokyo, Japan, having held a series of high-level meetings plus contacts with government officials, economic players, financial institutions, and Japanese industry giants.
However , there has always been excellent scope for the development of our own economic and trade relationships and exchanges. And this has been our strategic objective because the beginning of this government’s period. Already in July 2019, a few days after the government got office, we welcomed the high-level Japanese delegation on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who came to Athens to learn about the Greek start-up entrepreneurship ecosystem. This was followed, at the begining of 2020, by our own trip to Japan, as an economic diplomacy team, with the aim of revitalizing Japanese interest in the potential customers of the Greek economy.
Of course , it is true that our relations along with Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, have always been very helpful at the political level, even as we share common values associated with respect for International Law and international legality. The traditional ties as well as the cooperation in the maritime industry are also well known. And indeed, it is another success from the current government that we have was able to “do it the Japanese way”! What do I mean by that? After all that, by investing in a tradition of seriousness, responsibility, and cooperation aimed at promoting national economic interests and using the country’s comparative advantages as tools, we are now one step closer to finishing important agreements with Japan financial institutions as well as with Japan industry and advanced technology leaders.
It was a difficult mission that apparently could not have been undertaken four years ago. The fact that the Japanese welcomed all of us as reliable interlocutors plus reliable economic partners was the result of hard work and meticulous efforts.
The projected upgrade from the country’s investment status inside 2023 will be the crowning achievement of the efforts, as it will free up investments in Greece by major trading homes of Japan, as well as with the Japan Bank for Global Cooperation (Jbic).
