MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile to build vessels for Maersk

Chilean President currently in a state visit to Denmark announced that Maersk Sealand, on of the world's major maritime companies will be contracting the building of two vessels for Canada in Chile.

The operation involving 100 million US dollars in the framework of the free trade agreement with Canada, "wants to make use of the competitive edge of Chile in ship building", said President Lagos.

Maersk Sealand which belongs to the largest private consortium in Denmark has reached an agreement with the Valdivia shipyards which will be responsible for the building of these first two deep draught vessels, one of them to be delivered in early 2005.

President Lagos was also hosted by the Danish pharmaceutical industry, Novo Nordisk the world company with most patents in the industry and a leading research centre in diabetes.

"We talked about linking university research, patents, and business in general, which is so essential for Chile", indicated Mr. Lagos. "We must make use of every opportunity of our trade and investment agreement with the European Union".

President Lagos invited Danish Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Helge Sander to participate in the coming XII Biotechnology World Congress to be held in Santiago with the participation of over 1,500 renowned scientists.

This will be the first time an event of this kind takes place in Latinamerica.

Another area explored by president Lagos was Denmark's interest in complying with the Kyoto protocol for the conservation of the environment, an operation involving millions of US dollars.

According to the Protocol highly contaminating signatory countries can compensate their emissions (on a basic points system), by investing in developing countries environment protection projects. Chile presented the Danes with an investment option for 300 million US dollars which "were described as the most interesting offer so far".