Pres. Granger, Indian Prime Minister meet

Last Updated on Thursday, 24 September 2015, 22:58 by GxMedia

New York, Sept. 25 (ANI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Guyana’s President David Arthur Granger here Thursday .”Connecting with an important partner in Latin America.

PM @narendramodi meets Prez David Arthur Granger of Guyana,” Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) official spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted.

“President Granger presents PM @narendramodi copies of two monographs written by him,” he added.

India’s relations with Guyana are warm and cordial with a high degree of understanding. The interaction is structured through periodic Joint Commissions, Foreign Office Consultations, Cultural Exchange Programme and ITEC. Though structured bilateral visits are not very frequent, there are meetings of leaders at international conferences, either in India or abroad.

There is a small Indian community of Indians aprox 300 working as doctors, nurses, lab technicians, small business, skilled workers and laborers in big companies in Guyana. The number of Indians is likely to increase with the participation of Indian companies in the field of Agriculture. 

Granger’s predecessor, Donald Ramotar, and Modi had agreed in January 2015 that India would provide a new Line of Credit of USD 50 million for the East Bank Demerara -East Coast Road Link Project. India had also agreed then to concessional credit to supply a passenger ferry to help Guyana overcome transportation problems in the northern region.

The Guyana government recently announced that it would be hiring a vessel to ferry passengers and cargo to and from North West while the decades-old  ferry, MV Lady Northcote, is rehabilitated. The Granger administration has also said that it would be looking to India to supply a new vessel to ply that route which now takes more than 24 hours on a one-way trip from Georgetown.

India also plans to set up its first Information Technology (IT) Centre of Excellence on the South American continent, in Guyana.