India participated in 21st IORA Annual Council of Ministers' meeting virtually

India virtually participated in the 21st Annual Council of Ministers (COM) meeting of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) on Wednesday led by the Minister of State External Affairs (MoS), Dr Rajkumar Ranjan Singh.

The IORA COM was held in a hybrid format in Dhaka and Dhaka Communique was adopted at the end of the meeting, informed the Ministry of external affairs (MEA) in a statement.

"MoS, in his remarks, reaffirmed India's strong commitment to strengthening IORA, the largest and pre-eminent organization in the Indian Ocean Region, to promote peace, security and prosperity in the region as well as in the wider Indo-Pacific. He highlighted India's contributions as coordinator of the IORA priority areas of Disaster Risk Management (DRM)," the statement said

"During the Strategic Dialogue on the topic 'Impact of COVID-19 and perspectives of economic recovery in the Indian Ocean Region, providing an overview of India's own experience of combating the COVID-19 pandemic, MoS underlined India's assistance as the first responder in the region to various countries in the Indo-Pacific during the Covid pandemic and emphasised India's readiness to share her experience and resources in the spirit of solidarity," MEA added.

With the commitment of strengthening IORA, India also undertook various initiatives during the current year including assisting the IORA Secretariat, conducting capacity building workshops in the areas ranging from Yoga and traditional medicines to Remote sensing, UNCLOS and Ocean Data Management and leading the discussions on various issues under IORA, further informed MEA.

MoS congratulated Bangladesh for assuming the Chairship of IORA. He welcomed the Russian Federation as the new Dialogue Partner of IORA. He also congratulated Ambassador Salman Al-Farisi for being selected as the next Secretary-General (SG) of IORA and expressed hope that a full-time SG would help impart fresh energy and vision to the organization, the Ministry informed further.

( With inputs from ANI )