Uzbek TV
July 15

resident Islam Karimov received a delegation of Japanese businessmen, headed by the senior deputy foreign minister of Japan, Seiken Sugiura on Monday. The 33-man delegation included representatives from Japan's government, business and academic communities. Those making up the delegation were also members of the Silk Road Power Engineering Mission. During the visit, they will study the prospects for future cooperation in the power-engineering field.

As for relations between the two countries, as you know, Japan is a close and reliable partner of Uzbekistan. Relations are, therefore, expanding and developing from year to year. For example, the trade turnover between the two countries, which in 1997 was 40.3m dollars, exceeded 96m dollars in 1998 and reached 172.4m dollars in 1999.

At present, there are offices of 18 Japanese companies operating in Uzbekistan. Also, there are seven Japanese-Uzbek joint ventures and three enterprises that are based 100 per cent on Japanese investment.

Receiving the guests, the Uzbek head of state welcomed them to Uzbekistan and recalled a proposal that contributed a great deal to the development of the bilateral relations: in April 2002, Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi put forward the idea of including the Central Asian region in the process of economic cooperation in East Asia. The Uzbek president said that the present visit to Uzbekistan by a delegation comprising representatives of Japan's government, business and academic communities and members of solid banks and companies that know Uzbekistan well was a logical continuation of that proposal.

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