GUWAHATI: Japan Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae, who is arriving in New Delhi on Wednesday evening, July 1, on a three-day official visit, identified Assam as a key pillar in Japan's vision to strengthen connectivity across Northeast India and provide the region with improved access to the sea through Bangladesh, underscoring the state's growing strategic importance in the India-Japan partnership.
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In an article published ahead of the India-Japan Annual Summit, Takaichi said Japan's "Industrial Value Chain" initiative aims to enhance connectivity from Assam to various parts of Northeast India and Bangladesh, enabling access to the Indian Ocean.
Through Official Development Assistance (ODA), a Japan government-funded program that provides grants, loans, and technical assistance to developing nations, the prime minister stated that infrastructure projects including regional roads and bridges, the Dhubri-Phulbari Bridge, and Matarbari Port in Bangladesh, are expected to strengthen industrial value chains across Northeast India, the rest of India, ASEAN countries and beyond.
The PM also said that the connectivity projects would also benefit neighbouring Nepal and Bhutan, while reinforcing a free, open and resilient Indo-Pacific.
"The 'Industrial Value Chain' concept seeks to enhance connectivity from Assam to various parts of Northeast India and Bangladesh, thereby enabling access to the Indian Ocean," she wrote, describing the initiative as an important component of cooperation under the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) vision, India's Indo-Pacific Oceans' Initiative (IPOI) and the MAHASAGAR initiative.
Japan and India elevated their ties to a Special Strategic and Global Partnership in 2014 and the two countries have since expanded cooperation across security, economic development and people-to-people exchanges.
Japan has emerged as one of the Northeast's most significant international development partners through the Act East Forum, a dedicated India-Japan mechanism focused on infrastructure and connectivity projects in the region.
The summit was initially proposed to be held in Guwahati, but was later shifted to New Delhi. It marks the second time plans to host the India-Japan Summit in Assam have not materialised. In 2019, then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was scheduled to visit Guwahati for the summit, but the event was cancelled amid protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
Takaichi's three-day visit follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Tokyo in August 2025 for the 15th India-Japan Annual Summit and comes ahead of the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries next year.