REGINA - With a view to boost trade and collaborate on infrastructure investment, the Saskatchewan government has signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with Japan Overseas Investment Corporation.
The signing took place Monday between Minister of Trade and Export Development Jeremy Harrison and the CEO and President of JOIN, Tatsukiko Takesada. JOIN is the investment arm of the Japanese government, making investments into critical infrastructure areas and in areas of supplying resources to that country.
According to the province, the goal of the memorandum of cooperation is to encourage collaboration on infrastructure investment, with a focus on priorities such as helium development in which Japan has an interest in securing long term and stable supplies. There are also opportunities for Saskatchewan to showcase sustainable mining practises.
“It’s an honour for me to have signed the MOU with your government,” Takesada said, saying they would like to “promote more infrastructure business” in Saskatchewan with Japan.
Takesada added that Canada was one of their most important partners, and they wanted to strengthen the relationship between Canada and Japan. He noted JOIN had signed similar agreements with British Columbia and Alberta.
This agreement stems out of Saskatchewan’s recent mission to Tokyo, Japan in February in which Minister Harrison met with JOIN representatives.
In speaking to reporters Harrison noted Saskatchewan was an important trading partner for Japan in what it could offer.
“Saskatchewan is really one of the largest trading partners within Canada, if not the largest,” Harrison said. He said it was because of the massive exports of food and fertilizer, in particular potash. According to the province over $1.2 billion in goods was exported to Japan last year, mainly in agri-foods.
“What this is about is deepening that cooperation, formalizing that relationship, and really creating the conditions for an even more substantial economic export relationship from Saskatchewan.”
Saskatchewan does have formal commercial relationships with other countries but Harrison called this going a step further to “having a formal relationship between the governments, and us working with them as government to identify potential investment opportunities is a bit further than we’ve probably gone with a lot of other countries.”
What he hopes it will result in is “significant investment into Saskatchewan. That’s going to be a big part of what’s under discussion about what that might look like.”
Harrison also said the agreement means more and larger markets for farmers, which will mean more people working in Saskatchewan as well.
He noted potash and ag commodities are longstanding areas of trade with Japan but said “those relationships are going to be even larger and deeper and longer term because of the uncertainty created with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.”
Harrison said countries around the world are “even more interested in having long term relationships in the supply of critical commodities from friendly countries, and that really is our value proposition in Saskatchewan. Stable, reliable, long term partnership, that’s what we’re all about.”
