India is emerging as the fastest growing large economy in the world and is poised to join the club of $5 trillion economies by 2025. Despite continuation of the global recession over a decade, trade remained as the driver of growth for the country. Identification of new markets, new destinations, new partners and new products, is a major challenge for India. India’s bilateral trade with the LAC region is small but is characterised as the fastest growing continental destination, which is unprecedented in the economic history of India. Interestingly, the LAC region is primarily engaged with a group of only four major destinations in trade, and India is one among them.

However, dealing with the region is not devoid of challenges. Preferential trade is the rule of the game to secure different fragmented markets effectively, led by specific RTAs. Countries having large economic linkages with the regions are not only through trade alone rather these countries are combining both trade and investment commitments to foster bilateral trade activities in the region. While LAC region is a net importer of investment, it offers a large market, dominated by consumers from middle income group. Moreover, Trade in Services (TIS) is another area of trade, complementing
merchandise trade in the region. The focus of this publication is to understand how India can emerge as a major player in LAC to achieve a trade target of $125 billion by 2025.

Files