Belgium opens honorary consulate in GIFT City

Belgium has become the first country to open an honorary consulate office in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City), Gandhinagar, Gujarat. Belgium already has two Consulates-General in Mumbai and Chennai, and an honorary consulate in Kolkata. The consulate was inaugurated by Belgian Secretary of State for Foreign Trade, Pieter De Crem.
Hari Sankaran, Vice-Chairman and MD, Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS), has been nominated as Honorary Consul of the Kingdom of Belgium to the state of Gujarat. Gujarat and Belgium have strong historic ties surrounding the diamond industry.

GIFT City

GIFT is a central business district (CBD) located between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar in the state of Gujarat. GIFT will be built on 886 acres of land to provide high-quality physical infrastructure with facilities like electricity, water, gas, district cooling, roads, telecoms and broadband services to woo finance and tech firms to relocate their operations from Mumbai, Bangalore, Gurgaon etc. GIFT will include a special economic zone (SEZ), international education zone, integrated townships, an entertainment zone, hotels, a convention center, an international techno park, Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) units, shopping malls, stock exchanges and other service units. The likely cost of the GIFT City project is Rs 70,000 crore.
Gujarat International Finance Tec-City Company Limited (GIFTCL) is responsible for developing and implementing the project. GIFTCL is a joint venture of Gujarat Urban Development Company Limited (GUDCOL) and Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS).

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2017