Niigata – the 2017 Northeast Asia International Conference for Economic Development (NICE) was organized by Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia (ERINA) on 14-15 February 2017.

The NICE is held annually starting from 1990 by Niigata Prefecture with the objective to deepen expertly the discussion on a number of issues for bringing about lasting socioeconomic development in Northeast Asia.

The Conference gathered representatives from governments and academia from China, Japan, Mongolia, Republic of Korea and Russia. The participants were welcomed by Mr. Yoneyama Ryuichi, Governor of Niigata Prefecture, Mr. Shinoda Akira, Mayor of Niigata and Mr. Kawai Masahiro, Representative Director of ERINA.

During the keynote speeches by Governor of the Bank of Japan Mr. Haruhiko Kuroda and Barry Bosworth, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution the assessment and future prospects for the global, Japanese and US economies were presented.

The keynote speeches were followed by three sessions: “Development Strategies and Structural Reforms of the Nations of Northeast Asia and International Cooperation”, “The Connectedness of Transportation Infrastructure” and “The Economy of China’s Northeast and the Future Prospects for Trade and Investment”.

Programme officer from the GTI Secretariat Mr. Sergey Khidirov served as a speaker for the session on the Connectedness of Transportation Infrastructure to introduce the GTI’s efforts and achievements in the transport sector.

Special attention of the audience was addressed to the GTI Logistics Sub-Committee’s pilot shipment of containers through the Mudanjiang-Vladivostok-Donghae-Sakaiminato route. Representatives from ERINA highly evaluated the commitment of GTI to conducting pilot transportation in order to identify the bottlenecks along the new sea-land routes in NEA.

The participants shared a common recognition of the changes in the global environment surrounding NEA and the various challenges confronting the region and agreed to further promote NEA cooperation by strengthening subregional cooperation and undertaking facilitation of trade and investment and the interconnection of regional infrastructure.