India offers expertise to Central American countries

New York: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has offered India’s expertise to Central American countries in the fields of digital payment system, information technology, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture to tackle shared problems.

At the Fifth India-SICA Foreign Ministers Meeting here on Thursday, he said, “Our countries face similar challenges, of development, poverty alleviation, and climate change, and we can address these more effectively if we address them together”.

He said, “We believe that we can make this partnership one of tangible outcomes which will contribute to a more inclusive, balanced and multipolar world order”.

“We would like certainly to move forward in the digital area, in renewable energy, in food and health security, and in climate action”, he added.

The eight-member group, Central American Integration System , known by the acronym SICA, derived from its name in Spanish, works towards regional economic and political cooperation.

India began working with the group at the ministerial level in 2004.

Jaishankar said that India’s cooperation wth the group has deepened significantly as together they made progress in addressing challenges such as post-pandemic recovery, energy security, digital transformation, financing for development, and climate change.

He pitched the digital payments interface, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) developed by India, which has “had great success in ensuring a seamless, real-time, and secure method of transferring funds”.

“Today, more than half the world’s cashless payments in the world take place in India because of this” system, he said.

He said that India’s private sector is showing interest in investing in SICA countries, particularly in agriculture, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, and IT, which are “sectors where India has been historically very strong”.

As the world fights climate change, “many of our companies have developed a footprint in these three areas – solar, green hydrogen and bioenergy — across the world, he said about other areas of possible cooperation.

Jaishankar recalled that during the Covid pandemic, India strengthened its bonds with the region by supplying vaccines and said that India is ready to work with SICA to strengthen public health systems and to support affordable healthcare.

When the SICA countries suffered widespread damage to infrastructure and livelihoods from storms last year, India rushed essential medicines, relief materials, and emergency aid “as a gesture of solidarity”, he said.

–IANS