New Delhi: The Vice President of India, Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu has made a joint Press Statement along with the President of Costa Rica, Mr. Carlos Alvarado Quesada, in San Jose, Costa Rica on March 08, 2019.
Following is the text of Vice President’s statement:
“Your Excellency President Carlos Alvarado Quesada
& Distinguished Representatives of the Costa Rican Media
My delegation and I are indeed delighted to visit Costa Rica, which is a beautiful country and a leading economy in Central America.
Costa Rica has highest per sq km biodiversity in the world. Its rich flora and fauna are well known. It has 25% of protected green cover and holds highest ranking in the Happy Planet Index for being the greenest with highest environment-friendly disposition and attitude.
Yesterday I had addressed a business forum meeting.
Earlier today, I was honoured to be given the opportunity to speak at University of Peace.
Coming from the land of Mahatma Gandhi and in the year when we celebrate 150th anniversary of Bapu’s birthday, the gesture was particularly moving for me.
India is a peace loving country but has been a target of terrorism from across our border for the last few decades.
We discussed in detail the menace of terrorism and the need to fight in one voice. The dastardly terrorist attack on the Indian security forces on February 14, 2019 in Pulwama by a terrorist organization proscribed by the UN has once again demonstrated the need for decisive action by international community against individuals and terrorist groups engaged in terrorist activities.
President Quesada and I have had fruitful and cordial exchanges covering a range of areas of mutual interest spanning bilateral, regional and multilateral fields.
There are many new areas of collaboration that hold potential to propel our bilateral relations to new heights.
Costa Rican strengths that we desire to take advantage of include eco tourism, clean transport including support to bicycling, higher investment in education, ambition to have a zero carbon emission economy by 2021.
Indian strengths that Costa Rica can benefit from include space and biotechnology, renewable including solar, pharmaceuticals, ICT particularly eGovernance, hydroelectric generators and power plant equipments, farm machinery and skill upgradation, railway construction and rolling stock.
I invited Costa Rican companies to invest in India. I pointed out that as many Costa Rican CEOs and influential businessmen have close connections with angel investors and businessmen in the developed countries, they may look at expanding to India and benefiting from high return on investment offered by the attractive Indian economy.
We can collaborate effectively and to mutual benefit through academic exchange, university to university collaboration including high speed virtual connectivity.
Based on our fruitful exchanges, we are confident that our mutual efforts will open up new and innovative vistas for deepening ongoing engagement between both countries.
With air connectivity using code sharing between our airlines and visitor friendly visas, we would be able to promote closer people to people linkages which are the prerequisite for widening and deepening of bilateral relations.
We applaud proclamation of a Presidential decree in October 2018 whereby all activities and initiatives related to promotion of Yoga and Meditation have been declared to be in public interest thereby facilitating the promotion of Yoga within Costa Rica.
The two rounds of our Foreign Office Consultations till date have proved very useful to comprehensively discuss the various issues that our relationship encompasses. We have asked our teams to hold the next round of the Consultations at an early date.
I express my sincere thanks to President Quesada and the people of Costa Rica for the warm hospitality and excellent arrangements made for our visit.”
