India is committed to taking hard and difficult decisions in the long-term interest of the economy. Addressing the business community in Tokyo today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured Japanese industry that the long-awaited Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime will be in place by 2014. Dr.Singh told leading business honchos at the Keidanren, that the present bilateral trade of 18 billion US Dollars is not enough as campared to the enormous potential that exists between the two countries.

The Prime Minister said as a result of a number of steps to revive the Indian economy, Government expects the growth rate in the current fiscal (2013-14) to be much better than in the previous year and it will be even better in 2014-15.

He said the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) was also making good progress and had moved from the planning to the implementation stage. A number of priority projects for implementation from the first tranche of USD 4.5 billion provided by Japan for the DMIC have been listed.

Japan has also offered financial and technical support for a detailed project report for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Railway Route.

The Prime Minister stressed that a stronger commercial partnership between the two countries should be the cornerstone of the relationship and that it would be in the strategic interest of both and contribute to wider and enduring prosperity in Asia and beyond.