A Business Forum between Cuba and India took place on Monday at the institutional headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce of the Republic, headed by its president, Antonio Luis Carricarte, and Dr. Asif Iqbal, president of the Economic Trade Organization of the South Asian nation (IETO).
With the participation of about twenty Cuban state enterprises and MSMEs and a representation of Indian businessmen, the Forum allowed to continue developing and expanding inter-business ties between Cuba and India, to promote investments of Indian entrepreneurs in priority sectors in our country, and to identify new areas of bilateral cooperation, particularly in the sector of information technologies (ICTs) and electronics.
In his opening remarks, Carricarte Corona thanked the effort and commitment in favor of strengthening economic and trade relations between both nations, and assured that there is a total coincidence with the approach that the Chamber of Commerce is adopting in view of the process of internationalization of Cuba’s business ties with its main trading partners.
The President of the CCRC, who previously held a bilateral exchange with Dr. Asif Iqbal, also appreciated the establishment of the Trade Promotion Office with Cuba (Cuba Commissioner’s Office) recently created in Hyderabat, a city with great development in the biopharmaceutical, information technology, high-tech companies in general, as well as in agriculture and other sectors of interest where collaboration with Cuban counterparts is also expected to be established.
The representation of the Indian business community in the IETO delegation has the support of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce to identify and promote mutually beneficial trade and investment projects, which it intends to materialize in the short term given the priority given by both parties to strategic sectors, in a complex global context derived from the COVID-19 pandemic and the tightening of the US economic, commercial and financial blockade that has caused losses of more than 5 billion dollars.
At the conclusion of the Business Forum, both parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding and agreed to design a joint Action Plan with the aim of concretizing and strengthening commercial alliances between both countries.
The Indian delegation will remain in the largest of the Antilles until May 19, and has planned to complete an extensive program of activities that includes meetings with the LABIOFAM and BIOCUBAFARMA groups, the Cuban Medical Services Marketing Company, as well as visits to the Havana Science and Technology Park to exchange with companies in the information technology sector and MSMEs, the Mariel Special Development Zone, and the Liliana Dimitrova Horticultural Research Institute, in Mayabeque, among others.
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