He later told news media that while the existing visa-regulations did not differentiate between applicants of one nationality or the other or professionals from one sector or the other, there was an increasing demand from Japanese corporates to bridge the acute shortage of software professionals in Japan.

There were, he said, three ways of doing this. One was for Japanese companies to invest in the IT sector in India. The other was to recruit software professionals from India.

The third was for Indian software companies to invest in Japan. "The second biggest software company in India is in the process of doing so," he said. Wipro chairman Azim Premji had been to Japan recently and even met Japanese Prime Minister Mora who was scheduled to visit India in the near future.

Kuroda also stated that IT could provide a boost to bilateral trade between the two countries. He estimated that 60 per cent of India's software exports was going to the US, over 20 per cent to Europe and only four per cent to Japan which was sourcing its requirements from the US, Europe and South East Asia.

Japan was a global pioneer in commercialising internet-access technologies for mobile telephones and mobile communications, he said, which were certain to spread in India.

He was confident that the momentum of the past few months towards attracting global investment would be maintained.

- nriol.com report