Baku, September 2, AZERTAC

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received credentials of the newly appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan Junichi Wada.

Ambassador Junichi Wada presented his credentials to President Ilham Aliyev.

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev then spoke with the Ambassador.

Ambassador Junichi Wada: Mr. President, I am honored to present to you the letter of credence on my appointment as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Azerbaijan and a letter of my predecessor. Also, please let me convey to you the best wishes of His Majesty the Emperor of Japan. He deeply regrets the difficulties your country may have faced as a result of the COVID-19 infection and sincerely hopes that the friendly relations between the two countries will rise to a higher level in the future. Thank you.

President Ilham Aliyev: Thank you. I am very delighted to see you. May I also ask you to convey my best wishes to His Majesty the Emperor. I hope you have a good time in our country. I am sure that you will be very busy because the relations between Japan and Azerbaijan are developing very successfully. Our cooperation has a very broad agenda. First of all, our political dialogue is very active. We are seeing very good results in the economic sphere. We are very pleased that Japanese companies are interested in establishing business in Azerbaijan. They are good investors. They have invested heavily in Azerbaijan's oil and gas sector.

I hope that there will be interest in other sectors of our economy as well. Azerbaijan continues to be attractive to foreign companies, especially given the improving business environment. We are also grateful for your financial support of various projects. With the financial support of Japanese banks and financial institutions, we have implemented two important projects of our energy infrastructure – two power plants, test stations “Shimal-1” and “Shimal-2”. Their total capacity is about 800 megawatts. Of course, this is a great contribution to our energy security.

Therefore, we are pleased that Japanese companies are working here, and we also want to thank you for your voluntary support of various social projects. These projects are related to education, infrastructure and water supply in various villages. We appreciate this friendly gesture, and I would like to thank your government again. I do hope that we will further strengthen this close cooperation in the coming years. I wish you success in your activities in our country.

Ambassador Junichi Wada: Thank you very much, Mr. President. I am grateful for the almost 30 years of deepening mutual understanding and friendship between the two countries. There are no political issues of concern to us. We have implemented many projects and programs in the field of business and economic cooperation. The exchange between representatives of the two nations has grown rapidly. We are very happy. I will do my best to further develop and expand the sectors of cooperation not only in the oil and gas sector, as you said. For example, I would like to emphasize that information technology is about transforming society, or various issues related to ecology, climate change, agriculture, tourism and many other areas, of course. So I will do my best.