Seminar identifies areas of cooperation with Japan trade bodies

The Pakistan Japan Business Forum (PJBF) organised a seminar on Tuesday to create awareness amongst the local business community to explore areas of cooperation between the trade organisations and Association of Overseas Technical Scholarship-Japan (AOTS).
A large number of PJBF, and visiting AOTS delegation members including T. Tanaka, and Y. Suzuki attended the seminar was held at a local hotel. Abdul Kader Jaffer, President, PJBF said that PJBP was a bilateral forum committed to improve economic relations for the benefit of both Pakistani and Japanese entrepreneurs in order to achieve maximum objectives.
"The PJBF has also an objective to contribute to human resource development with active assistance of AOTS-Japan, which has been very consistent in providing training through various programmes to Pakistani business professionals and engineers for the last several years," he elaborated.
He said that as many as 2000 Pakistani professionals had got training from AOTS, but this figure should have been higher than present, holding the lack of a proper publicity of the training programme responsible that could not attract the business community.
He urged that the many more such professionals could get training from AOTS. "Now media is believed to play a vital role to cover the AOTS activities in Pakistan," he hoped. T. Tanaka, General Manager, AOTS New Delhi, said that AOTS would be expended by 2008 for Pakistani candidates. He apprised that the benefits of various AOTS training programmes including technical training, specialised technical training, management training and distance training programmes etc.
He said that AOTS would expand its circle of affairs, as earlier was only focused on automobile sector, now it would include HR and leadership training to Pakistani professionals in its policy. "Since 1959, till 2004 the AOTS had provided about 288,016 with AOTS training with programmes," he added.
K. Ayukawa, Vice President PJBF also assured that the six of AOTS programmes would be expanded. In addition, to automobile, which was so far the very focused area of AOTS for Pakistan.
The objectives of the seminar, according to Pakistan Japan Business Forum (PJBF), was to find out possible areas of cooperation for identifying fields and scope of training required for the Pakistani professionals and engineers. The seminar deliberation will help the PJBF and AOTS to finally chalk out a road map to implement such collaboration.
Documentary films about the AOTS activities were also shown during the seminar. The AOTS was established in 1959 with the support of ministry of international trade and industry (which is the present ministry of economy, trade and industry), as the first technical cooperation organisation on a private basis in Japan. The chief aim of the Association of Overseas Technical Scholarship-Japan (AOTS) is to promote international economic cooperation and enhance mutual economic development and friendly relations between those countries Japan.