The major opportunities for stepping up partnership between Tunisia and Japan in a number of promising sectors took centre stage at a meeting on Tuesday afternoon in Tunis between President of the the Association of African Economic and Development Japan (AFRECO) Tetsuro Yano and Minister of the Economy and Planning Samir Said. The Japanese official, who is currently visiting Tunisia for the inauguration of a Tunisian-Japanese unit called Nippomed, specialised in the manufacture of wellness bioscanners (ultra-fast bio-scanner), pointed out that this project, whose production will be geared towards the domestic market and certain foreign markets, including the African market, is based on the latest technologies at world level in the pharmaceutical industries, according to a press release issued on Wednesday by the Department of the Economy. Said, for his part, voiced Tunisia’s willingness to boost economic relations with Japan, whether under bilateral or three-way cooperation agreements geared towards African countries, notably in promising sectors such as the pharmaceutical industry. In this same context, the minister underlined the possibility of enhancing bilateral cooperation in the fields of research, innovation and biotechnology by creating synergies and twinning arrangements between the universities, technology parks and specialised research centres of the two countries. He added that his department would provide the necessary support and guidance to Japanese companies wishing to set up in Tunisia or extend their activities to neighbouring markets. The NIPPOMED project, located in the El KalaS Kebira industrial zone (in Sousse), was set up as part of a partnership between a Tunisian pharmaceutical company and the Japanese company G Cube. The new unit is expected to produce 330,000 pregnancy tests a month.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse