MARKETING:IRISH COMPANIES and State agencies will need to market themselves aggressively to survive a deepening recession, Taoiseach Brian Cowen said yesterday.
On the first day of his official five-day visit to Japan, the Taoiseach said the economic downturn made it vitally important to pursue the “Asia strategy”. This envisaged substantial increases in trade between Ireland and major developing economies in the region – China, Japan, Korea and India.
“We are in a difficult environment. Rather than closing in on ourselves and losing faith and confidence in our capacity to handle this, we have to get out there and market aggressively. And Irish companies are doing that as much as others,” said Mr Cowen.
Speaking to reporters in Tokyo yesterday, he pointed out that Japan was the second-largest economy in the world and could afford significant opportunities for increased trade between the two countries.
“It is an open economy like ours. We have to be out marketing the country, trying to improve market share, particularly in these times as well. More so than ever, we have to be out there,” he said.
The overall figure for trade between Ireland and Japan amounts to €4.2 billion, almost equally divided between imports and exports.
However, only €95 million of the €2 billion worth of goods and services exported from Ireland to Japan comes from indigenous companies – multinationals based in Ireland account for the rest.
Mr Cowen accepted that substantial improvements could be made in this regard but said there were inherent difficulties associated with the Japanese market in the past.
“We have to [improve]. The whole strategy of Enterprise Ireland is to add value and internationalise Irish business to the greatest extent we possibly can,” he said.
“You would like to see it do better. But Japan is only beginning to open up. [In the past] it was seen as a difficult place to do business, to gain access to markets in the past. That’s changing because of the changes taking place worldwide,” he said.
Mr Cowen is leading a trade mission to Japan involving more than 70 Irish companies.
He said a major aim of the mission was to boost the co-ordination of research and development (RD) programmes.
“In the past Japanese companies did all their RD work. Now there’s a far more open method of innovation where they work with others,” he said, adding that there was major potential in that area.
