India lent its vaunted IT expertise to tiny Laos with the inauguration here Sunday of a state-of-the-art IT laboratory built entirely by Indian agencies.

Indian External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh and Laos Information Technology Minister Blountiem Phissamay jointly inaugurated the Laos-India Information Technology Centre that is part of an agreement signed in September.

The agreement enjoined on India to provide e-governance infrastructure, set up IT training centres, build capacity for government officials and create model rural telecom centres in this largely Buddhist nation of six million people circumscribed by China, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.

The agreement envisages establishment of a V-Sat network for 18 provinces in Laos and setting up community information centres for agriculture, rural health and other developmental programmes.

"The speed which our two countries have shown in implementing the projects is a testimony to the seriousness which we attach to our bilateral relationship and to bridging the digital divide among and within our nations," Natwar Singh said.

The centre has been set up in just eight months by two Indian state-owned agencies, the Centre for Development of Advance Computing and the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

"In a short span of time Indian instructors have also trained the first batch of around 30 Lao officials in the use of IT and solving the Lao language information processing," N. Vijayaditya, director general of NIC, said.

"The next phase of our project will involve setting up a V-Sat network for 18 provinces for e-governance and a rural health and development programme along the Mekong river," Vijayaditya told IANS.

Natwar Singh said even as India has emerged as an IT superpower and a base for one in three global companies for their outsourced software and process work, the country does not use IT to merely become the back-office for the world.

"We are using IT to make real changes in the lives of our people, particularly through e-governance and e-education. These have, we believe, the potential to revolutionise the development process in our country."

Earlier, Natwar Singh had a meeting with United Nations Special Envoy for Myanmar, Tan Sri Razali Ismail, and subsequently attended a business meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

--Indo-Asian News Service