With Japan witnessing a fall in the country’s working population, it is now looking at India to fill the manpower gap in its country. Japan is reportedly looking to hire around 2 lakh IT professionals from India in the coming days.
Japan currently employs around 9.20 lakh IT professionals. According to Shigeki Maeda, Executive Vice President of Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), there is demand for 2 lakh more from India and this number is expected to rise to eight lakhs by 2030.
Speaking at the India-Japan business partnership seminar organised by JETRO and Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce on Thursday, Shigeki Maeda said that the Japanese government will be issuing Green Cards for highly skilled professionals and is ready give them a permanent resident status within a year.
Japan is working on a new deregulation machinery to test emerging technologies such as self-driving cars, long-range drones and piloting rules changes among others.
“This new system will foster experimental studies in evolving technologies such as IoT, AI, big data, automatic flight, and automatic driving, thereby clearing a path through the thicket of regulations. This will throw up incredible opportunities for Indian IT professionals to test new technologies in Japan with supportive government regulations superior to any other place in the world,” The New Indian Express quotes him as saying.
Japan has been outsourcing some of its IT recruitments to countries such as China since the 1990s, and later countries like Vietnam and the Philippines.
In addition to this, Japan is also looking to collaborate with companies specifically from Hyderabad, reports Mint.
JETRO is reportedly looking at the pharma industry in Hyderabad for investment and it is also looking at promoting generic drugs.
According to Maeda, at present there are 1,369 Japanese companies in India, with investments of about $3.69 billion in 4,838 centres. They mostly have a presence in the manufacturing and automotive sectors in India.