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Thank you very much for your kind introduction. Kalimera sas, chairman, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.Today, I would like to talk about the Japanese current situation of the Japanese policy in maritime industry and a huge technological development. But first of all before talking about this issue I would like to appreciate our existing tie between Japan and Greece. I have come to this country last August and since then I tried to visit as many shipowners as possible and every time I met them, I felt very warm welcome from them, and I really felt an existing very good friendship between our countries.

And today, first of all, the current situation of the Japanese Maritime industry, we have a lot of value chains inside Japan and that is the machinery business,shipbuilding, ownership, management and operation and my message is: Japanese shipping is back.

This is the structure of a Japanese maritime cluster in Japan and of course in the base we have the machinery industry over here, and as you know we have many good manufacturers like Daihatsu or Yamaha, or this engine company or a painting company they have a representative here in Athens as well, and also based on such machinery industry we have to the shipbuilding industry.

And we have been in the number one place, but recently because China and South Korea is growing, so our country we are a little bit behind, but after I explain to you, the Japanese ship industry is also backing.

The shipowners, that is the number of shipowners in the overseas area is around 700 and we are the second biggest ship owning country after Greece and also our shipping industry and the carriers also are very active.

And first of all, I would like to explain the environmental side, since these days the environment is a very important issue and because the, some kind of pollutant abatements is required by the IMO as well, we have a technology development project from 2008 and 2009 to 2012 that has successfully reduced 30% of the CO2 emissions from ships.

That is the requirement by the IMO so we have already achieved such standard.

And because of these some example of the engine system and fuel shift, dual fuel gas engine is already developed and some kind of good propulsion system, controllable feature a propeller and also very low-friction coating of the hull.

I would skip this one, because of these technological developments I think the Japanese shipbuilding industry is back. This is the kind of the figure of the share of the new ordered ships among the world. Korea, China and Japan is already competing, and these are the three major shipbuilding countries and in 2015 because of the our technological development and also the appreciation is a little bit lower and because of this condition we became the second place in the new order of the shipbuilding industry.

And this is the overview of the shipping industry in Japan. We keep around 10% of the world trade volume so this is the second biggest in the world next to Greece and also today my main topic is a new trend of Japanese maritime industry that is the first stage is i-shipping and second stage is auto shipping.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation, they launched the i-shipping initiative in Japan and that is the digitalized technology can be applied to the many areas many aspects of the shipping industry.

The first stages the i-shipping design, applying the information technology to the designing of the shipping we have very extreme shipbuilding technologies and also the second example with the application of this kind of information technology for the production, we have the, well, we have rationalized the process of manufacturing the shipbuilding because of this kind of application of the digitized technology to shipbuilding we have succeeded in reducing the cost of shipbuilding a lot.

So, because of these kind of technological development Japanese shipbuilding industry is now very competitive, where the China or the South Korean industry as well. So, that is the successful things.

And another thing is the application of the i-shipping operational side we are having some monitoring system in our operation, so it keeps the maintenance cost very low, that is another issue of the application of the technologies and so far the, we are at the first stage of i-shipping but the second stage of i-shipping is auto shipping. Recently, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation launched the auto shipping initiative.

That is the autonomous technologies in the area of the automobile we have many developments but we have a similar kind of technological development in the future.

So if the auto shipping technology is rearised perhaps it will reduce many cost of the shipping industry. So, it will be the futures challenge.

Our challenge has just begun but we have already launched some R&D programs so, I hope by 2025 we will have some result and one more thing I have to say is, in coming June we have the Posidonia exhibition here in Athens and many hundreds of Japanese ship business people are coming and they have their exhibition stand here in the Posidonia exhibition so you can visit them and have more details about the Japanese development. And I am looking forward to seeing you at Posidonia. Thank you very much.