Close on the heels of its collaborations with Germany, France and Belgium, the rich and tiny European state of Luxembourg has expressed keen interest to outsource health services to India and collaborate for further research in the biotechnology sector.

Leading a delegation comprising 20 companies to the country, Luxembourg Minister of Economy and Foreign Trade Jeannot Krecke told industrialists that India could provide health technology to them. "Medical equipment manufacturers and service providers of India are the best in the world,'' he observed.

Luxembourg has multi-technology advantage in certain sectors and the financial sector of the country is rated very high as per the worldwide benchmark, said Mr. Krecke.

"We need your value-added services using cheap labour. These services that were earlier available only to big companies, but are now available to small and medium companies, and we welcome that," Krecke said.

Exploring the possibilities of e-health, the small and rich European country has recently started collaborations with neighbouring health care systems of Germany, France and Belgium. The country is now looking forward to work with Indian companies to manufacture medical equipments at a cheaper rate, besides making use of low labour costs in the health sector.

Nicolas Soisson, director, Federation of Luxembourg Industrialists (FLI) said, manufacturing based economy of his country was rapidly moving towards service-based economy and India can assist the country in this phase of transition.

Luxembourg has an advanced national health service, supervised by the Ministry of Public Health. Public health facilities are available to physicians and treatment of patients is on a private basis. The Roman Catholic Church operates either by the state or hospitals.