By IANS
New Delhi : India and Brazil Monday invigorated their bourgeoning strategic and economic ties by signing seven agreements and memoranda of understanding (MoUs) in areas ranging from space, trade and energy to academic exchanges.
These were signed in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the stately Hyderabad House here.
They relate to audio-visual co-production, cooperation in augmentation of Brazilian earth station for receiving and processing data from Indian remote sensing satellites, mutual assistance in customs matters, academic exchange programme, India-Brazil CEOs Forum, cooperation among India's energy major ONGC, its foreign investment arm OVL and Brazil's Petrobras, and cooperation between the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) of India and the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) of Brazil.
Earlier, Manmohan Singh and Lula held talks on a wide spectrum of bilateral, regional and global issues including quadrupling their bilateral trade to $10 billion by 2010, civilian nuclear energy cooperation, promotion of bio-fuels, UN reforms and cooperation in multilateral forums like the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Lula, who began his three-day state visit Sunday, was accorded a ceremonial reception at the Rashtrapati Bhawan.