Milwaukee, Oct 1 (IANS) Brazil and India are moving towards substantially expanding the existing India-Mercosur preferential trade agreement, with the two sides completing work on terms of reference that could pave the way for negotiations on a broader trade arrangement, a senior Brazilian minister has said.
Brazil’s Minister of Development, Industry, Trade and Services Márcio Elias Rosa said India was an important economic partner for Brazil and that the existing trade arrangement was too limited.
“India is a highly important trading partner to Brazil,” Rosa told IANS in response to a question on the sidelines of the G20 Trade Ministers’ Meeting here.
“India is an economy that is very important to the whole wide world. We have good relations with them,” he said.
Rosa was responding to questions from IANS after his meeting with India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal.
“What we discussed now is a possibility of having an agreement, a broad agreement, between the two economies and Mercosur,” he said.
Mercosur is the South American trade bloc that includes Brazil.
Rosa said the existing preferential trade arrangement between India and Mercosur covered only a small number of products.
“We already have a tariff preference agreement, but it’s very shy. It’s just 450 tariff funds. Meaning that nothing absolutely. So we need to expand that,” he said, according to the English interpretation provided during the gaggle.
The Brazilian minister indicated that discussions with India had already advanced to the stage of defining the framework for further negotiations.
“We’ve just finished drafting a term of reference. Similar to what is just now being drafted with the US,” Rosa said.
“Once we define that, we can build proposals,” he added.
Rosa described his meeting with the Indian side as “excellent” and indicated that further work would take place over the coming months.
The discussions point to an effort by Brazil and India to broaden a commercial relationship beyond the existing tariff preferences and identify areas where greater market access could be negotiated.
The minister separately identified several sectors in which Brazil and India could deepen cooperation, including the bioeconomy, circular economy and digital economy. He also referred to artificial intelligence, skills development and defence during the discussions.
–IANS
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