TOKYO (Reuters) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will contact down in Japan on Saturday with six of his ministers in search of nearer financial ties, as he considers decreasing German dependence on Chinese language uncooked supplies amid international provide chain tensions.
Scholz and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are planning a “authorities session” involving a number of cupboard members from each international locations to debate methods to safe financial safety.
“As democracies and as extremely industrialized, export-oriented economies, Japan and Germany face comparable challenges in shaping the digital and ecological transformation and strengthening the resilience of their financial system in troublesome geopolitical occasions,” Franziska Brantner, state secretary in Germany’s financial system ministry, advised Reuters.
Given Japan’s passing of a invoice on financial safety, Berlin hopes to study its uncooked materials technique and take Tokyo’s cue on find out how to reduce dependency on imports, a German authorities official mentioned of the go to.
In a transfer primarily targeted at China, Japan’s parliament handed an financial safety invoice final 12 months geared toward guarding expertise and reinforcing crucial provide chains.
Commerce between Germany and China rose to a file stage final 12 months, making the Asian nation Germany’s most essential buying and selling companion for the seventh 12 months in a row regardless of political warnings in Berlin about extreme dependence.
Items value round 298 billion euros had been traded between the 2 international locations in 2022, up round 21% from a 12 months earlier than, in accordance with information from the German statistics workplace.
Japan is Germany’s second largest buying and selling companion in Asia behind China, with volumes reaching about 46 billion euros in 2022.
Fearful about Germany’s dependence, the centre-left authorities is now taking a more durable line in direction of Beijing than its centre-right predecessor and is exploring methods to wean itself off China’s financial system.
(Reporting by Sakura Murakami in Tokyo and Riham Alkousaa in Berlin; Enhancing by Alex Richardson)