Sunday, December 13, 2015

N-deal to bullet train to defence

N-deal to bullet train to defence
New Delhi/Varanasi : Japan on Saturday, 12th December 2015, committed billions of dollars of investments in India, including a $12-billion loan at negligible interest for the much touted "Bullet Train" and another $12 billion for the "Make in India" initiative, besides inking far-reaching pacts on defence and nuclear energy as part of what has been termed as the "Power of 16" agreements.

The 16 agreements came during Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to India, during which he also attended the annual bilateral summit on the "special strategic and global partnership" with his host and Indian counterpart Narendra Modi.

"Today, we have scaled new summits in our shared journey," a visibly pleased Modi told the media after his delegation-level talks with the visiting Japanese side, led by Abe. "The partnership between India and Japan has infinite potential. I'm convinced of that," Abe, on his part, added.

The Indian side was particularly elated with the package for the high-speed train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, as it comes with an interest of a mere 0.1 percent, a duration of as many as 50 years and a moratorium on repayments up to 15 years.
Modi also thanked Abe for the "Japan-India Make-in-India Special Finance Facility" of up to 1.5 trillion yen ($12 billion approximately) to promote investments from the Asian giant, mainly in infrastructure that need long gestation funding.

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