The current office has been restructured and focused on providing information and market assistance to Alberta businesses seeking to enter the Japanese market. Our focus is squarely on trade development and investment attraction. Our clients are Alberta based businesses. Alberta is far from major markets and must export goods and services in order to expand economic growth and employment. Japan has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, has an insatiable appetite for our energy resources, agriculture and food products, and increasingly, high value manufactured items.
Japan is Alberta's most important trading partner after the United States.
The future prospects for the Alberta-Japan relationship appear equally promising. Japan is a difficult market to access partly due to cultural and language barriers, a unique business culture, a convoluted distribution system, a complicated regulatory environment, and the high cost of doing business. However, all this does not mean Japan is an impossible market to be successful in. Quite the contrary, many Alberta-based firms, including many small and medium size businesses, have been very successful in Japan. They did this by spending the time and effort to understand the country and the market.