Transcript: Japan insights and opportunities
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Leonie Muldoon ‒ Senior Trade Commissioner Tokyo, Country Manager Japan
Leonie oversees a team of over 40 trade commissioners, investment commissioners and business development managers in four offices across Japan. Leonie speaks Japanese fluently. She joined Austrade in 1993 as Investment Commissioner for Japan and, later, North Asia, responsible for inbound investment from the region to Australia.
A lawyer by profession, she was previously a partner with Mallesons Stephen Jaques in their Sydney Banking and Finance practice, and has worked extensively in corporate management roles spanning industries as diverse as communications, professional services, and legal publishing.
Transcript
>>Leonie Muldoon: Japan’s really a powerhouse economy, it’s the third largest economy in the world, it’s 50% larger than Germany – the fourth largest economy – and it’s 110% of France – the fifth largest economy. So it really offers a substantial opportunity. It also has the advantage that 3% of Japanese consumers are millionaires, so that’s five times the wealth that we’re seeing in China and when we go into an era of the high A dollar, it really makes a difference for Australian exporters to be looking at a market that will pay for quality and has the capacity to do so.
Japan not only exists onshore but has a substantive presence in third markets. So over recent years we’ve seen Japan suffer from a high Yen, high labour costs and a shrinking domestic market. The impact of that has been that Japanese industry has really diversified and moved out, particularly into southeast Asia.
There’s a tremendous opportunity to leverage Japan’s presence in southeast Asia to start exporting, partnering with Japanese companies across a whole range of sectors. The opportunity of Japan in Asia is at least as big as the opportunity that Japan itself presents currently.
Austrade is really well placed in Japan. Not only have we got offices across the island, so we’ve got quite a good geographic reach, but above and beyond that we just know lots of people and we benefit from the fact that we move as the Australian government in Japan, and government is very important in Japan. So there are no doors that will not open to us and we’re keen to open them on behalf of exporters.
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