Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday evening met at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem with Chilean President Sebastian Piñera.
Also attending the meeting were Transportation Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, Science Ministry Director General Ran Bar and additional senior officials. Attending for the Chilean side were Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation Minister Andres Couve, Foreign Ministry director general Patricio Torres and additional senior officials.
Netanyahu told his guest, “Israel and Chile have a lot in common. We share values of democracy and human rights. We share a belief in market economies and both of us have done a few things to promote these values in our respective countries.”
“We believe in entrepreneurship. We believe in creativity. We have relatively small, not so small, but relatively small, very vibrant economies. It's recognized by the countries in Latin America, Chile's capacity in this regard just as the countries of the Middle East and the world recognize Israel's capacities as an innovation nation,” continued Netanyahu.
“We're both relatively new members of the OECD. Our achievements have attracted much interest in foreign investments from all over the world. So we've achieved a lot separately but I believe that we can achieve a lot more together,” he noted.
“We just spent a few minutes now as we did in Brasilia, we discussed how we can increase the cooperation and exchanges between Chile and Israel, both on the governmental level and no less important on the company to company level, on the private sector level. When we last saw each other at the inauguration of President Bolsonaro in Brazil, we made a commitment to upgrade that cooperation and we are fulfilling that today.”
We have already signed five agreements and we're going to sign now another three with our respective ministers. This will push forward the capacities, the opportunities that we have to seize the opportunities and meet the challenges that we will do and we can do it better together.”
“I look forward to continuing this in our discussions with your delegation downstairs and then having you and your wife Cecilia at our residence today so that we can continue to forge new heights for our friendship. Welcome, friend," concluded Netanyahu.
Netanyahu and Piñera attended the signing ceremony for various bilateral agreements: An MOU on a scientific cooperation program between the Science Ministry and the Chilean National Authority for Scientific and Technological Research; an aviation services agreement between the governments; and a declaration of intent on health and medical cooperation between the two countries' health ministries.