Odisha eyes Japanese investment in IT, shipping, skill development sectors

Bhubaneswar: A high-level delegation led by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik made its effort to promote Odisha as a preferred investment destination among industrialists in Tokyo city of Japan for the third day.

Taking the momentum forward on the early gains made on the last few days in Tokyo, the delegation continued with its series of one – on – one meeting.

The delegation which includes the Minister of Industries, MSME, and Energy, the Chief Secretary to the Principal Secretary, Industries Department, Principal Secretary, E&IT Department, Secretary to CM, Secretary, Sports and Youth Services, and Managing Director, IPICO, today met stalwarts from the field of IT & ITES, Skilling and logistics and shipping lines. The marquee names included Fuji Soft, NYK Lines, NITKAL and Sumitomo Group.

In line with the huge potential that the state offers in the field of IT and ITeS, the Fuji Soft Group has proposed to open a ‘Centre of Excellence’ in the state capital of Bhubaneswar.

Buoyed by the steady supply of software engineers and skilled workforce in the above sector, Bhubaneswar has been a happy hunting ground for all the marquee labels, which are already present in the state. With Fuji Soft proposing to open the proposed CoE, it will add the required fillip to the already burgeoning field.

Keeping in focus the skill development initiatives of the state, NITKAL (Nihon-UTKAL) has tied up with OUTR (Odisha University of Technology & Research) to set up a dedicated skill development centre in the state to cater to the huge demand for trained work force in Japan. NITKAL (Nihon-UTKAL) is also continuing its dialogue with IIIT for establishing a dedicated Japan centric centre for skill development in the relevant field.

Logistics and storage for the new sunrise sector of green hydrogen and green ammonia continues to attract a large amount of traction. Keeping in lines with these modern initiatives, two of the stalwarts in its field, met the high-level delegation led by the Chief Minister.

The block NYK Lines (Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha) evinced keen interest in setting up dedicated shipping lines, starting from the port-of-call Paradeep/Gopalpur/Dhamra to transport out the green ammonia to the countries which are committed to the greening of the said sector, especially the south east Asia right up to Japan. They were briefed by the high-level delegation about our existing port infrastructure and the future development prospects.

Sumitomo Corporation a global fortune 500 company met the delegation and evinced interest for creating tankage and storage facilities for the green hydrogen and green ammonia sector. They are zeroing in at Gopalpur, which, with its, SEZ located just next door, happens to be an ideal location for the same.

The Chief Minister instructed all the officials to create a roadmap for all these investments in the sunrise sector and create time lines to achieve a quick turnaround for all the proposals received.

The visit of the Chief Minister to Japan continues to buttress the commitment of the state government to promote Odisha as a favourable investment destination and strengthen the emerging economic and cultural ties with Japan.

The delegation is scheduled to proceed to Kyoto to continue with the initiatives and initiate further bulwark in the field of sports and tourism.