Domestic products such as textiles and chemicals would get greater market access in Chile as the expanded preferential trade agreement between India and the South American nation will come into effect from May 16.
Under this expanded preferential trade agreement (PTA), both the countries have offered to lower or eliminate duties on a number of items traded with each other.
Chile has offered duty concessions on as many as 1,798 goods such as agri items, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastics, textiles, apparel, iron and steel items, copper machinery, to Indian exporters as compared to 178 items earlier.
On the other hand, India has offered concessions to Chile on 1,031 products including meat items, fish, vegetable oil, processed food, pharma, plastic and pearls as against 296 earlier.
"With this pact coming into force, we are going to see a big growth in the bilateral trade," Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia said.
Over 96 per cent of the total trade is now covered by this agreement.
Meanwhile, the Commerce Ministry in a statement said that the expanded PTA would immensely benefit both sides as a wide array of concessions has been offered by the two countries on a number of products which will facilitate more trade.
Chile is the fourth largest trading partner of India in LAC region after Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina.
It also said that during the last few years, bilateral trade has been in favour of Chile because of import of high volume of copper ore which constitute more than 88 per cent of the imports from Chile.
It added that keeping in view that Chile is the founding member of the Pacific Alliance to which India is an observer member, implementing the expanded PTA could deepen its engagement with the emerging trade bloc.
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