Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor and Development Corporation (DMICDC) on Friday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with six Japanese companies including Hitachi, Mitsubishi Corp, Tokyo Electric Power Company and Toshiba. The Industrial Corridor runs through six states, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra and is being developed as an international manufacturing and trading center.

Three state governments, Haryana, Gujarat and Maharashtra, too signed MoUs with the Japanese companies on the sidelines of the seminar ‘India-Japan Business Potential: Exploring New Opportunities’ organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

According to the MoUs signed, Japanese consultants will carry out feasibility studies to set up smart communities in Manesar-Bawal region of Haryana, Changodar and Dahej of Gujarat and Shendra industrial region of Maharashtra. Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said that the first phase of the $100bn project will be completed by 2018.

The first phase of the Industrial Corridor project will involve seven cities across the six states. Each city will require an investment of $9-10bn. “We expect industrial output to triple and exports to grow four times on its completion,” Mr. Sharma said. “These will have significant impact on employment generation, industrial production and exports.”

DMICDC chief executive Amitabh Kant elaborated the concept of the project, “A smart community means a city in which citizens, business and government live, work and interact in a sustainable manner through delivery of integrated, low carbon products and services. The industrial corridor provides India a unique opportunity to adopt futuristic smart city concept of minimal pollution, maximum recycling and reuse of finite resources and optimization of energy supplies.”

Mr. Naoshima, Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry said that India’s growth potential is unlimited with its dynamic middle-class and young population. The smart cities will embrace Japanese model of utilizing all industrial waste as raw materials for its other industries resulting in a zero emission environment and an independent recycling-based community.

India has the second largest footwear industry after China and exported around USD 1.53 billion in 2008-09. With improving economy the exports are expected to more than double to USD 3.37 billion by 2013-14. Currently India produces about 2.06 billion pairs of shoes in different categories. About 40 percent of the exports include leather and leather products. Per capita consumption has also increased from .5 pairs to two pairs in India. This is because of the competitive pricing, better quality and the wide range of designs available in the market.

President of Indian Footwear Components Manufacturers Association B D Bhaiya told that, “With the quality and price competitiveness that has been proved, I am confident that India will fast become a major player in the global footwear market, as more and more companies are shifting their sourcing needs as well as production basis towards us.” Several international brands like Nike, Addidas and Reebok source footwear from India. The country’s major export markets are the US and Europe. With a 100 percent foreign direct investment in the footwear sector several foreign companies have set up production base in India. Companies like Formas Kunz (Brazil), Feng Tay Enterprises (Taiwan) and Apache Footwear (China) have their production base in India.

The country is on the verge of an explosive growth in new multinational companies (MNCs) and will top the emerging economies, which includes Russia, Brazil and South Korea. This forecast was made by a report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers on Thursday. The report predicts that India would overtake China, the present leader in the category with 141 new MNCs in 2009, by the year 2018.

The key reasons attributed to this change are Indian economy’s rising investment intensity and openness, when compared to China. The report ‘The Emerging Multinationals’ estimates at least 2,200 Indian companies would establish global presence in the next 15 years. And, this would lead to India and China accounting for 42% of new MNCs for the period. By 2024, India will be having 20% more new MNCs than China.

Even as emerging economies gain importance in the post-recessive world, the report points to developing new trends regarding the expansion plans of MNCs. Yael Selfin, head of macro consulting, PwC, explained further, “More new multinationals are moving straight into developed economies as opposed to setting up their first foreign operation in a neighboring emerging economy. These new multinationals are increasingly likely to be in business services or higher value-add manufacturing sectors as opposed to the more basic natural resource extraction sectors.”

The report says that this development could have serious repercussions for companies offering B2B services such as telecommunications and ITeS. Establishing new offices and manufacturing facilities will lead to growth in demand for local services and infrastructure by new MNCs.

The report was prepared using econometric methods to estimate the number of new MNCs for the next 15 years from a representative sample of emerging economies.

Forbes ‘Global 2000′ lists companies based on sales, profits, assets and market value to rank companies according to size. The ‘Global 2000’ ranking takes into consideration 62 countries across world with majority of companies from US and Japan topping the list. JPMorgan Chase, followed by General Electric, Bank of America and ExxonMobil topped the list. This year 56 Indian companies have entered the list. Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries was ranked at 126th place in this global list. Other Indian companies named in the list include State Bank of India (130), ONGC (155), ICICI Bank (282), Indian Oil (313), NTPC (341), Tata Steel (345), Bharti Airtel (471), Steel Authority of India (502), Larsen & Toubro (548) and HDFC Bank (632). Two companies from the Anil Ambani Group, Reliance Communications (742) and Reliance Infrastructure (1,702), have also made it on the list. Other Indian companies named on the list include state-owned Punjab National Bank (695), Tata Consultancy Services (741), HDFC (783), Infosys (807), DLF (923) and Hero Honda Motors (1,571).

Companies in US and Japan dominated the list with 515 members and 210 members respectively. Developing countries are also gaining ground with mainland China with 113 members, India with 56 members and Canada with 62 members. Forbes said, “In total, the Global 2000 companies now account for USD 30 trillion in revenues, USD 1.4 trillion in profits, USD 124 trillion in assets and USD 31 trillion in market value. All metrics are down from last year, except for market value, which rose 61 per cent.”