Diplomatist Magazine Diplomatist January 2019 | Page 16

IN FOCUS
A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
FOR INDIA-LAC TIES
BY HARI SESHASAYEE*
I
ndia’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a rare visit
to the South American continent – for only the second
time since taking offi ce, out of a total of more than 90
international visits. Just like the last time he visited the
continent (for the 2014 BRICS Summit in Brazil), Modi made
the trip to attend a multilateral summit – the G20 Annual
summit in Buenos Aires on November 30, 2018.
The visit gives us an opportunity to examine India’s ties
with the Latin American region: How important are bilateral
ties? Where is India-Latin America relations headed in the
21st century?
Today, India is closer than it has ever been to Latin
America’s economic orbit. A testament to this is the fact that
since 2014, India is the third-largest export market for the
Latin American region, behind only the United States and
China. Latin America now exports more to India than to the
UK, France and Russia combined. All manner of products,
from petroleum to teak wood, make their way from Latin
America to India. The region is an important export partner
for India too: it is the largest market for India’s car and
motorcycle exports and nearly 10 percent of Indian pharma
exports are destined for Latin America.
Besides trade, there is also a sizeable cross-border
investment. About 150 Indian companies have so far
invested roughly $16 billion in Latin America, mostly in
the automobile, pharma, IT and agricultural sectors. Bajaj
Pulsar and TVS Apache motorbikes are ubiquitous in
Central America and northern South America, while the Tata
brand fi nds excellent recall throughout the region – credit
to the 15,000 people employed by TCS in Latin America.
Similarly, some Latin American companies have managed to
successfully capture the Indian market, and around 35 Latin
American companies have opened offi ces in India.
Thousands of Indians have been to a Cinépolis movie
theatre, whose 350 screens dot the entire nation, from
smaller towns like Muzaff arpur, Bihar (population 370,000)
and Ambala, Haryana (population 200,000) to India’s
metropolises like Mumbai and Delhi (population of 20+
million). Thousands more have ridden in the Tata-Marcopolo
buses across India, jointly manufactured by India’s Tata
Motors and Brazil’s Marcopolo.
Such advances in trade and investment ties over the
past two decades have brought the commercial relationship
front-and-centre. India and Latin America thus view each
other through the lens of economic diplomacy; both see each
other as a source of economic diversifi cation. Today, they
16 • Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 7 • Issue 1 • January 2019, Noida