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KEIDANREN Mission — Visit To Slovakia

On Wednesday, 19th October the Slovak Investment and Trade Development Agency (SARIO) had a pleasure to welcome 29 representatives of the Japanese Business Federation KEIDANREN,
a comprehensive economic organization bringing together a large
number of Japanese companies, industrial associations and regional economic organizations.


The delegation was led by Mr. Yoshio Sato and Mr. Hiroaki Ishizuka, Chairs of the Keidanren Committee on Europe and also joined by H.E. Jun Shimmi, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Slovak Republic. Aim of the mission was to identify mutual cooperation and investment opportunities in Slovakia as well as to learn about Slovakia’s development since the last Keidanren visit in July 2010.

In his welcoming remarks Mr. Robert Šimončič, Chief Executive Officer
of SARIO, expressed a deep interest of SARIO to support both trade and investment activities of Japanese companies in Slovakia and praised a long-term fruitful cooperation with the Embassy of Japan in Bratislava.

Mr. Šimončič regards the mission as an excellent way to promote Slovakia among the members of Keidanren.

Afterwards Mr. Ishizuka in his remarks highlighted the fast development and economic growth of Slovakia, particularly emphasizing its great results in the automotive industry and expressed the interest of Japanese companies and institutions to explore future cooperation.

The opening words were followed by a presentation delivered by Mr. Šimončič, which introduced Slovakia as a business friendly country with favourable business environment, hard-working and highly qualified labour force and vast opportunities in a variety of sectors including automotive, electronics, or chemical industry.

However, he stressed that Slovakia is now heading towards high value added areas such as IT, R&D, robotics, biotechnology attracting more investments related to these activities.
 
The presentation was followed by a short Q&A session, which showed an interest of the delegation members in the problem of labour shortage and its impact on companies operating in Slovakia, the tendency to move from production to R&D and other highly sophisticated areas, but also the role of IT in the automotive industry. The programme ended with a luncheon which created a great possibility for networking.

Apart from the visit of SARIO, the delegation had meetings with such Slovak representatives as the President of the Slovak Republic Mr. Kiska, Minister of Economy Mr. Žiga or Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Mr. Lajčák