Chilean President Ricardo Lagos is currently visiting Japan at the official invitation of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. I suppose that one of the aims of his visit is to ask Japan to begin a joint study with Chile on the possibility of a free trade agreement, or FTA, between Japan and Chile. I say, why not? In November 1999, Gabriel Valdes, then-Chilean minister of foreign affairs, visited the Japan External Trade Organization when I was its chairman and proposed that JETRO and the Chilean Foreign Ministry conduct a joint study on a Chile-Japan FTA.

The proposal was accepted by JETRO after consultations with the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry). With a JETRO committee formed on the Japanese side, the study started in May 2000 and was completed in June 2001. The committee included experts and business persons as regular members with director-level government officials of MITI, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries as observers.

The study concluded that an FTA between Japan and Chile would be positive and that a maximum effort should be made to reach an FTA in view of the potential impact on Japan's domestic industries, the multifunctionality of agriculture and the need to secure a stable supply of natural resources.