India and Brazil decides to boost trade ties

Aiming to scale up economic engagement, India and Brazil today decided to boost ties in sectors like infrastructure, trade and investment and mining besides exploring opportunities in nuclear energy sphere.
At the seventh India-Brazil Joint Commission Meeting (JCM), co-chaired by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Brazilian counterpart Mauro Vieira, both sides resolved to exploit the "full potential" of the strategic partnership, with a particular focus on ramping up trade ties.
India and Brazil, both having huge markets, are part of a number of important bloc including BRICS (Brazil Russia, India, China and South Africa) and IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) and they work closely in various multilateral forums.

Strongly pitching for concerted global efforts to deal with terrorism, Swaraj and Vieira condemned direct or indirect financial assistance to terror groups, saying international community must focus on choking channels of their fundings.
"They urged the international community to cooperate with urgency to conclude and adopt the draft Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism in the United Nations at the earliest," said a joint statement.
It said both the countries stressed that the UN has a central role in coordinating international action against terrorism, which must be conducted in accordance with international law.

On nuclear energy sector, both sides, in pursuance of recent discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Dilma Rousseff, agreed to further explore mutually beneficial cooperation.

Swaraj and Vieira reviewed cooperation of the two countries in the defence sector and agreed to strengthen joint efforts on promoting cyber security, combating cybercrime, and improving cooperation between law enforcement agencies.
"Both Ministers stressed their full commitment to promote a secure international maritime domain freedom of navigation in accordance with international law and norms. Towards this end, both sides are working on signing a Technical Agreement for White Shipping Information Sharing," the statement said.
On trade relations, the Ministers expressed satisfaction at the enhanced bilateral trade turnover of USD 11.42 billion in 2014. At the same time, they acknowledged that there is tremendous potential for further growth and diversification of trade including in sectors like infrastructure, trade and investment and mining among others.

A significant number of Indian companies have invested in Brazil with over 50 of them having involved in sectors areas such as oil, renewable energy, mining, automotive services and pharmaceuticals.
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Deliberating on BRICS, the two sides stressed the important role played by it in the global scenario while the Brazilian side expressed its full support to the upcoming Indian Chairmanship of the bloc from February 2016.
"The Ministers underscored the importance of ongoing cooperation in G-20, BASIC, WTO, as well as in the UN and other international fora to consolidate the strategic partnership that strives for equity and transparency in the spheres of international finance, trade, climate change, and sustainable development.

On climate change, the two ministers reiterated the need that a balanced, comprehensive and equitable agreement for the post 2020 period will be adopted at the forthcoming climate conference in Paris.
They underlined the significance of a strong and united G77 and China group position on various climate change issues under negotiation and emphasized the crucial role the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) countries would need to play in achieving a successful outcome at Paris, the statement said.