Fernandez commitment to 'green economy'

posted on: Feb 5 2011 13:10 by The Reporter. Viewed 470 times.


According to a speech given by President Leonel Fernandez at the Sustainable Development Summit which opened last week in India’s capital city Delhi, Fernandez aims to turn his country into a “green economy”.

Fernandez was on an official visit to India and attended the summit’s opening speech, delivered by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and then shared a discussion table with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and the Seychelles President, James Michel.

Before an audience of several hundred people, the Dominican president said that “green growth” is “the way forward,” and encouraged each country to “assume” responsibility to reverse the effects on world climate change. He also announced the signing of an agreement with Germany to develop a model with Dominican universities to develop “green economy” for his country, with a view to later design a plan of action.

Trade between India and the Dominican Republic is still small: in the last five years it has only amounted to US$306.5 million, related Fernandez in his speech in Delhi with the major chambers of commerce and industry in India. The President has promoted the Dominican Republic in India as a base for Indian investors, so that the Dominican Republic becomes for India, a “gateway” to the different markets in the Americas.

“Because we have a free trade agreement with the United States, products made in the Dominican Republic can access the U.S. market on preferential terms. Products from India do not have these terms,” the president told Efe Caribbean. The Dominican Republic can “ensure access, particularly to the U.S. east coast, and this is an extraordinary market,” he said. Other ways to develop the relationship, he added, could be the Dominican exports of tobacco products, and our knowledge of the Spanish language to develop and translate software applications in India. “We gain visibility and with that, tourism,“ he said.

The President landed last Sunday in India and, after holding academic and business meetings in the economic centers of Bombay (west) and Bangalore (South), then faced the more formal part of his visit to China. The objective of his trip to China is to promote investment and trade, with particular attention to the film industry, information technology and communication, and academia.