Dominica
India enjoys traditionally cordial bilateral relations with Commonwealth of Dominica since the diplomatic relations established in 1981. There is excellent cooperation between the two countries in multilateral forums, including supporting each other’s candidatures.
Cooperation to tackle the challenge of COVID-19 Pandemic
- The Medical aid donated by the Government of India for the people and Government of Commonwealth of Dominica to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19, was formally handed over to Commonwealth of Dominica at a virtual ceremony held in August 2020.
- Under the Vaccine Maitri Initiative, Government of India donated 70,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine to Dominica on February 9 2021.
- An MoU on mutual recognition of COVID vaccines between India and Dominica was signed on May 7, 2021.
Capacity Building & Other Exchanges
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India has been contributing to capacity building of the Commonwealth of Dominica (CD) by providing training to its personnel under the ITEC programme at various training institutions in India.
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As part of capacity building trainings, nearly 71 professionals from Dominica have been trained in India under ITEC since 2002. Of these, 36 professionals have been trained just in the previous 9 years since 2014-15.
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The Government of India has recently increased the number of annual training slots from 5 to 10 for Dominican nationals. Courses mostly sought after by Dominica are in the areas of IT, Accounts and Financial Management, HRD, SMEs, etc.
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Centre for Excellence in IT (CEIT): Following the signing of MoU on setting up of a Centre of Excellence in IT in Dominica in October 2011 under bilateral cooperation programme between Dominica and India, the Centre has recently been set up. India established the CEIT in June 2016 at an approximate cost of US$ 5,06,000. It was set up by C-DAC at Dominican State College. The first batch graduated in June 2017. More than 600 candidates have benefited out of the centre so far
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On request of the Dominican Government, an agriculture and horticulture expert from National Research Centre for Banana, Thiruchirapalli visited Dominica for a month in January 2011 to advise the Dominican Government on horticulture
Development Cooperation (Grants/ LoCs/ Assistance)
- India has been at the forefront in extending humanitarian assistance to Dominica during natural disaster that struck Dominica from time to time: US$ 100,000 in December 2011 (Hurricane Ophelia), US$ 300,000 in December 2013 (flash floods), US$ 200,000 in August 2015 (tropical storm Erica), and US$ 100,000 as immediate relief and US$ 1 million in September 2017 for infrastructure reconstruction under India-UNDP (Hurricane Maria) – used for reconstructing housing sector.
- Donation of medicines: On a request from the Dominican Government for donation of medicines for their public hospitals, GOI has provided medicines, under GOI Grant-in-aid scheme in 2016.
- In September 2020 an assistance of US$ 1 million was given from i-UNDP fund for rehabilitation of Salisbury education facility post hurricane Maria.
- In February 2021 assistance of US$ 1 million was given from I-UNDP fund for the project- Strengthening sustainable livelihoods and resilience in the Kalinago territory.
