(Repeats merchandise first printed on Friday with no modifications to textual content)

TOKYO, March 17 (Reuters) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will contact down in Japan on Saturday with six of his ministers looking for 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 economic system in troublesome geopolitical occasions,” Franziska Brantner, state secretary in Germany’s economic system ministry, advised Reuters.

Given Japan’s passing of a invoice on financial safety, Berlin hopes to be taught its uncooked materials technique and take Tokyo’s cue on how you can lower dependency on imports, a German authorities official mentioned of the go to.

In a transfer primarily centered at China, Japan’s parliament handed an financial safety invoice final yr aimed toward guarding know-how and reinforcing crucial provide chains.

Commerce between Germany and China rose to a file degree final yr, making the Asian nation Germany’s most essential buying and selling accomplice for the seventh yr in a row regardless of political warnings in Berlin about extreme dependence.

Items price round 298 billion euros have been traded between the 2 international locations in 2022, up round 21% from a yr earlier than, in accordance with knowledge from the German statistics workplace.

Japan is Germany’s second largest buying and selling accomplice in Asia behind China, with volumes reaching about 46 billion euros in 2022.

Anxious about Germany’s dependence, the centre-left authorities is now taking a harder line in direction of Beijing than its centre-right predecessor and is exploring methods to wean itself off China’s economic system. (Reporting by Sakura Murakami in Tokyo and Riham Alkousaa in Berlin; Modifying by Alex Richardson)