The issue was discussed during Brazilian vice president Geraldo Alckmin’s visit to India from October 15-17 and the two sides decided to set up a technical dialogue between India and Mercosur, including holding a meeting of the joint administration committee created under a provision of the PTA at the earliest mutually convenient date, with a view to defining the scope of the expansion, said an official.
The India-Mercosur PTA, which came into effect on June 1, 2009, has limited coverage and contains only 450 tariff lines or products. Both sides are looking at expanding the scope of the pact to a full-fledged agreement. “Mercosur, for 12 years, has not had new agreements. In 2023, the Mercosur-Singapore agreement was made. Last month, Mercosur-EFTA (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein) was made…The fifth country to join Mercosur, besides Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, is Bolivia,” Alckmin told a select group of journalists on Friday. “The Mercosur-India agreement has a small number of tariff lines, and it covers a few products. And this work that is going to start, we believe that in 10 months we can conclude it… It has exactly this objective, which is to expand trade. Expand the so-called trade preferences. That is the challenge. We are very confident in this work.”
He said that Brazil is keen to deepen ties with India, especially in the fields of defence, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and technology and that in a path-breaking step, both countries have signed an agreement for joint vaccine production.