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Subject: Virginia's Japanese Connection; Agency Assigns Adviser to Help State Increase
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 05:41:19 EST
Message-ID: <28.1992Nov9.054120@AmeriCast.com>

Virginia's Japanese Connection; Agency Assigns Adviser to Help
State Increase Exports<By Snigdha Prakash<Washington Post Staff
Writer<

 Ted Adams III flew to Japan in June as a guest of the Japanese
government and returned home with contacts that led to a sizable
contract for his Springfield company.

 The Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), a government
agency that promotes imports to Japan, flew Adams to Tokyo, paid
for his hotel and introduced him to several companies that could
serve as distributors for the fire-suppressing chemical he was
trying to sell.

"It gave you the opportunity to see the market without a lot of
out-of-pocket expenses," said Adams, executive vice president of
Pyrocap Inc.

  More Virginia business executives soon may begin working just
as closely with JETRO. The Japanese agency last month assigned an
adviser to Virginia's Department of Economic Development to help
the state's companies crack the Japanese market.

 The adviser, Kazuhiro Kato, will try to identify products with
export potential and match Virginia companies with potential
Japanese importers. He is one of 18 trade advisers JETRO has
placed around the nation, mostly in state governments. The move
is part of an effort by the Japanese government to increase U.S.
imports and narrow the trade deficit, in response to U.S. pres-
sure.

  Though Adams believes that his company would have made a deal
even without JETRO's help, he said the Japanese agency's involve-
ment expedited the process.



But officials at the U.S.  Commerce Department were skeptical
about the merits of Virginia's agreement with JETRO.

 "I really don't know" how effective JETRO can be, a Commerce
Department official said. The Japanese market is "a very diffi-
cult market to penetrate whether you are a foreign company or a
U.S. company," the official said.

 Japan was the second largest market for Virginia's exports in
1991, said Ralph H. Graner, director of the trade development
group at the Department of Economic Development in Richmond. The
state exported products worth $1.3 billion to Japan, of which to-
bacco and coal accounted for almost $1 billion, he said.

 One goal of the JETRO program is to widen the range of products
exported; prefabricated housing and medical equipment are two
targeted areas, Graner said.

  Small- and medium-sized companies face daunting obstacles to
doing business in Japan, the Commerce Department official said.

These include the high cost of travel and doing business there,
the difficulty in distributing to the thousands of small special-
ized stores and the expense of adapting U.S. products to Japanese
tastes and standards, the official said.

"I'm sure many (JETRO advisors) have a sense of what (American
companies) can sell" in Japan, said the Commerce official, and
can help U.S. companies determine if they have a marketable pro-
ducts.  Nobu Koyama, director of public relations for JETRO in
New York, said his agency is "aggressive" in pushing both consu-
mer and industrial U.S. exports to Japan. "Our final goal is to
make the trade imbalance balanced by increasing U.S. exports,"
Koyama said.

"While JETRO has some influence on the Japanese industrial estab-
lishment," U.S. companies also should use the resources of the
commerce department, the embassy in Tokyo and the American
Chamber of Commerce in Japan, said Marjory Searing, deputy assis-
tant secretary for commerce.

 "I think there's a benefit" to JETRO's efforts, Searing said,
"but I think Virginia will have to work hard to make it
real."<04:51 11-09C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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