Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori will visit Bangalore, the bustling Indian version of the U.S. Silicon Valley, during his forthcoming trip to the South Asian country, government sources said Wednesday.
The sources said Mori's planned visit to Bangalore, in the southern Indian province of Karnataka, will be aimed at demonstrating his resolve to promote an information technology-related industry as a means of galvanizing the slowly recovering Japanese economy.
Mori will make an eight-day tour of South Asia starting Aug. 19 that will also take him to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. He will be the first Japanese prime minister to visit the region since Toshiki Kaifu went there 10 years ago. The specific itinerary of Mori's South Asian tour has not yet been formally announced, however.