India, Japan ink pacts to boost IT cooperation

NEW DELHI: India and Japan have signed a joint statement and three Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) for enhancing the cooperation in the ICT sector.

Minister of communications and IT Dayanidhi Maran and minister of internal affairs and communications, Japan Taro Aso signed a joint statement at the conclusion of the ministerial ICT Forum to explore and identify the possibility of having JVs and stand-alone projects in the areas of broadband, mobile communication, e-governance, information security, R&D and ubiquitous computing.

Both the sides decided to constitute working groups comprising of industries and representatives of the government in the above mentioned areas, so as to achieve the meaningful outcome of India-Japan ICT Forum.

Over 100 top Japanese executives from companies including NTT, NEC, Matsushita, OKI and Kyocera accompanied the Japanese minister as part of the delegation.

Department of Information Technology additional secretary M Madhavan Nambiar from Indian side and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) director general Ishida from the Japanese side will head the Joint Task Force.

Speaking on the occasion, Maran said that this is just the beginning of a fruitful relationship with Japan. “India has a lot to learn from Japan in terms of technology and then Indianize those technologies for applying them in India. Japan is far ahead of India in the telecom sector. Where India is still trying to make full utilization of voice, Japan has surpassed voice and graduated to e-wallet, which is a virtual wallet in your cellphone,” he added.

Aso said that one of the major problems that Japan is going to face in future is of aging. The proportion aged 65 and above is expected to rise from 17.1 percent in 2000 to 26.7 percent in 2025, making Japan one of the “oldest” industrialized nations. He added that a lot of Japan's IT professional are going to retire soon and the country is looking at the Indian IT talent pool to fill the gap.