Nissho Iwai Corporation has won contracts to supply a total of 12 billion yen worth of equipment for Brazil (4.3 billion yen for the Ministry of Health and 7.7 billion yen for the Ministry of Education and Culture). These contracts, the largest ever awarded to a Japanese firm to meet Brazil's requirements for educational & medical equipment, will have 85 percent of the contract amounts financed with buyer's credit by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.

The contract with the Ministry of Health covers a battery of state-of-the-art medical equipment, which includes units of diagnostic imaging apparatus made by Japan's Toshiba and Germany's Siemens. The one with the Ministry of Education and Culture covers packages of newest educational and medical devices, including medical equipment made by Toshiba, highly efficient microscopes and endoscopes made by Olympus, and AV devices made by Sony and JVC. These instruments are to be installed in packages at 49 locations for the welfare ministry and 99 locations for the education ministry with the deliveries expected to begin in May 2001.

There is one more contract concluded with Brazil,bringing the total value up to 13 billion yen. That one is for one billion yen worth mostly of Brazil-made medical equipment to be supplied to the Ministry of Health by Nissho Iwai de Brazil using financing by the World Bank. There also is another two-billion-yen contract likely to be won soon for medical equipment for Brazil using financing from Inter-American Development Bank.

In anticipation of further growth in Brazil's medical and health industries in years ahead, Nissho Iwai Corporation and its group companies have decided to take up a 35-pecent equity of the Griensu Brasil S.A (capitalized at one million reals) established to develop new businesses and offer new services in the areas of medicine, education, and IT in Brazil. The Nissho Iwai group will take this occasion to work ever harder to exploit new business opportunities in intimate contact with Brazil's locality as well as have more export transactions realized with Brazil by drawing on the expertise the Nissho Iwai group has accumulated over the years in handling large export contracts for Brazil.