SBI PO 2006

Read the following passage and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.

In a disarmingly frank talk at the Indian Merchants Chamber in Mumbai the Japanese Ambassador in India dwelt at length wise issues that exercise the mind of Japanese investors when they consider investment proposals in India.
Rising the question ‘’What comparative advantages does India offer as an investment market?’’, he said though labour in India is inexpensive, wage levels are offset by productivity level to a large extent.
Acknowledging that vastness of the Indian market is a great ‘’inducement’’ for investment in manufacturing industry the wondered if it was ‘’justifiable’’ to provide that overseas remittance of profit in foreign exchange to fully covered by exchange earnings as had been done. Significantly, on the eve of the Prime Minister’s visit to Japan, the Government delinked profits repatriation from exports, meeting this demand.
The Ambassador said foreign investors needed to be assured of the continuity and consistency of the liberalization policy and the fact that new measures had been put into force by means of administrative notifications without amending Government laws acted as a damper.
The Ambassador pleaded for speedy formulation of the exist policy and pointed to the highly restrictive control by the Government on disinvestment by foreign partners in joint ventures in India.
While it is all too easy to dismiss critical comment on conditions in India ‘’contemptuously’’, there can be wooed ‘’assiduously’’, we will have to meet exacting international standard and cater at least partially to what we may consider the ‘’Idiosyncrasies’’ of our foreign collaborators. The Japanese too have passed through a stage in the fifties when their products were divided as substandard and ‘’shoddy’’. That they have come out of the ordeal of fire to emerge as an economic supper power speaks as much of their doggedness to pursue goals against all odds as of their ability to improvise and adapt to internationally acceptable standards.
There is no gain-saying that the past record of Japanese investment is a poor benchmark for future expectations.