Ambassador and dear colleague Satoshi SUZUKI, Professor Roberto CINGOLANI and Mr. Shunichi MIYANAGA, Co-Chairmen of the IJBG, Presidents of ICE and JETRO, representatives of Italian and Japanese institutions and companies, good evening.
I am very honored and pleased to be here with you this evening to open the thirty-fourth General Assembly of the Italy-Japan Business Group, a year and a half after our meeting in Tokyo in November 2023.
That occasion marked a moment of resolute revitalization of this extraordinary long-lasting business platform.
Our joint vision was to ensure that it could provide new opportunities and impetus for industrial and economic cooperation in the framework of the “Strategic Partnership”, announced by our Prime Ministers in January 2023 to strengthen our bilateral relations ahead of our G7 Presidencies and in a very challenging international context.
I am very proud to say that in a relatively short time that vision is already realizing.
Our economic relations have been making significant progress, as shown by growing trade volumes and investments, pushed by a new spirit of trust and interest as well as by the booster effect of the success of the Italian Pavilion at Expo Osaka. The presence of numerous companies attending the IJBG tomorrow is the best possible testimony of this renewed shared interest in increasing and expanding the spectrum of our partnerships.
As President Mattarella stated during his visit to Keidanren in Tokyo last March, this cooperation is also a reflection of our Nations’ awareness of the necessity to unite to face the huge challenges that put at risk our economic growth and prosperity. I am thinking at the security of supplies, the digital transformation and the governance of artificial intelligence, as well as the green transition, just to mention the most relevant ones.
In this context, it is precisely in innovative sectors such as aerospace, life sciences, clean energies, agritech, smart mobility and new technologies – on which we have chosen to focus our industrial and scientific cooperation – that Italy and Japan have the unique opportunity to unleash unexploited potential, shaping the way that will define our bilateral relations in the next 30 years.
In recent years, direct investments from Japan to Italy and vice versa have grown, but at a slower pace compared to other countries and especially considering the potential of our industrial systems that are both diversified, highly evolved, innovative, and fully reliable.
As the many success stories of Japanese companies in Italy and Italian companies in Japan testify, we have all the conditions for strong and successful new partnerships and we must commit ourselves to look at each other as the preferred partner in many high-tech programs in the future.
Greater industrial integration would also increase the level of our scientific research and commercial exchanges boosting in a win-win logic both Italian exports of intermediate and industrial goods, which today are still very limited compared to consumer goods, as well as Japanese exports.
Let me conclude by wishing that this thirty-fourth General Assembly of the IJBG will mark another important step forward in deepening our “Strategic Partnership” by ensuring a better understanding of the great potential of our industrial ecosystems, creating new contacts and synergies, and inspiring new ideas for future cooperation.
Thank you.