Two busy days of engagement with Japanese counterparts and companies have been all about boosting investment, deepening our cooperation, and bolstering the resilience of both economies in an uncertain global environment.
Key outcomes include:
- Signed the Finance Ministerial Memorandum of Cooperation with my Japanese counterpart, Minister of Finance Katayama.
- Agreed to boost investment cooperation, focusing on energy and fuel security, green industry, housing, critical minerals and digital infrastructure.
- Agreed to increase collaboration on supply chains for key goods such as fuel, food and critical minerals, as well as promoting and protecting critical technologies.
- Agreed to deepen our partnership to support the Pacific, including through investment coordination, efforts to improve access to banking services and cross‑border payments and initiatives to boost resilience against financial crime.
- Established a new annual Australia‑Japan Finance Ministerial Dialogue between the Australian Treasurer and the Japanese Finance Minister to deliver on the objectives of the Memorandum of Cooperation.
- Announced the new Australia‑Japan Strategic Financing Memorandum of Cooperation that will see Export Finance Australia work with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation as well as other strategic financing agencies to coordinate faster and more effectively on our shared economic security priorities.
While in Japan, I brought Australian and Japanese business leaders together to discuss investment and trade opportunities.
I chaired a roundtable with investors representing more than $4 trillion in assets under management, as well as a housing roundtable, bringing together Japan’s biggest home builders to unlock more housing construction in Australia.
Over 48 hours, I took part in around 20 separate meetings and other engagements, joining with more than 30 CEOs, business presidents and directors.
This includes two of the largest banks, the largest industrial conglomerate and two of the largest trading houses in the world.
My message to them has been clear – Australia has a unique combination of strengths that makes it the best place in the world to invest.
We have abundant renewable and traditional energy investment opportunities, new opportunities in green technologies and industries, and world‑class critical minerals and metals ores.
We are a digital hub in the Indo‑Pacific and we offer stability and security in the fastest growing region in the world.
If investors want to make the most of the defining decade ahead, nowhere offers more opportunities than Australia.
We’ll continue to work closely with our Japanese counterparts to unlock investment, strengthen economic security and more closely collaborate, and these agreements are an important part of that.