Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Tagore honoured with Uruguayan stamp


The Uruguayan postal department has issued a stamp to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. The stamp was released today by Vice President Danilo Astori along with Indian Ambassador R. Viswanathan in the presence of Foreign Minister Luis Almagro at a ceremony in the Foreign Ministry at Montevideo. Uruguay is the first country in Latin America to do so.

From right to left: Ambassador Viswanathan, VP Danilo Astori, FM Almagro, Directors of postal department.
Mr Danilo Astori, the Vice President of Uruguay is visiting India from 21 to 27 February. This is the most important bilateral visit in the last twelve years. He is accompanied by a 50-member delegation which includes 26 businessmen and 24 officials as well as by the Minister of Industries Mr Roberto Kreimerman.

Mr Astori will meet the Vice President of India and the Speaker of Lok Sabha and will have another meeting with Mr Anand Sharma Minister of Commerce and Industry. He will address the business seminars being organised by FICCI on 24 February and another one by CII on 25 February.

An Agreement for the avoidance of Double Taxation and another one for cooperation in New and Renewable Energy will be signed during the visit.

Mr Astori will inagurate the TCS building in Siruseri near Chennai on 23 February. This 250 million dollar building complex which will have 30000 staff working in it, has been designed by the famous Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott.

Mr Astori will have meetings with Indian business groups such as Tata, Essar, Birla as well as with EximBank of India in Mumbai on 21-22 February.

India´s exports to Uruguay in 2010 were 69 million dollars and imports 14 million. There is enormous potential for increasing the trade.
TCS has a Global Delivery Centre in Montevideo which employs 900 Uruguayan staff. This was the first centre of TCS in Latin America established in 2002. Another Indian IT company Geodesic has a software development centre with 40 Uruguayan programmers. More Indian companies have shown interest in investment in Uruguay in sectors such as agribusiness, mining and pharmaceuticals.

The Ministry of Commerce of India is considering a proposal to set up a bonded warehousing facility in Montevideo from where Indian goods such as handicrafts, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and engineering items could be distributed to other countries of South America.

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