Brazil urges India to broaden MERCOSUR presence
Brazil has asked India to expand its
commercial and multilateral footprints in South America. Brazil is also
planning to take up this issue in the upcoming Goa BRICS summit.
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi and
Brazilian President Michel Temer are scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting where Brazil is likely to push for greater presence of
India in MERCOSUR.
Background:
India at present has over 450 tariff lines
with MERCOSUR (Southern Common Market). But, the plan now is to raise the
tariff line to 4000. Both sides have already begun to take several steps to
firm up India’s involvement in MERCOSUR that covers apart from Brazil,
Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Venezuela.
What is MERCOSUR?
Mercosur is a sub-regional bloc. Its full
members are Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. Its associate
countries are Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Suriname.
- The Mercusor trading bloc was established in 1991 and negotiations with the EU originally started in 2010 with a number of ‘rounds’ of negotiations, which have the overall aim to agree a trade deal between the two blocs to allow easier trading of goods and services as well as government procurement and intellectual property and technical barriers to trade.
