India's Trade With Brazil Reached US$15.07 Billion in 2025-26 and With Peru US$10.02 Billion, and Talks to Widen the Mercosur Trade Pact Opened on 14 September 2026

India’s goods trade with Brazil was US$15.07 billion in the financial year 2025-26, which ran from April 2025 to March 2026. DD News, the public broadcaster, reported that figure on 31 August 2026 from the eighth meeting of the India-Brazil Trade Monitoring Mechanism in Brasília. The External Affairs Ministry’s brief on Peru, as on 30 June 2026, puts trade with Peru for the same year at US$10.02 billion, of which India’s exports were US$1.15 billion.

Around those two numbers sit a trade pact with the Mercosur bloc, a lithium project in Argentina, payment and digital agreements, and medicine and training programmes. Each figure below carries its year, because the official briefs mix financial years and calendar years.

Which year each trade figure covers

The Commerce Ministry’s page for its Latin America and Caribbean division gives US$39.19 billion of trade with 43 countries in 2024-25: US$15.17 billion of exports and US$24.02 billion of imports. The page has not been updated to 2025-26. On 22 September 2026, a Press Trust of India report says, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told the India-CELAC foreign ministers’ meeting, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, that trade with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños) is over US$50 billion a year. The report gives no year or country list for that number, so it cannot be compared directly with the ministry’s figure.

For single countries the External Affairs Ministry’s briefs use calendar 2025: Brazil US$15.21 billion, Mexico US$11.09 billion, Argentina US$6.91 billion and Chile US$5.38 billion. India Briefing, citing the Department of Commerce, gives Argentina’s financial-year 2025-26 figures as US$1.01 billion of exports and US$4.96 billion of imports, about US$5.97 billion in all (tuput’s sum). The national export record is covered in India’s record US$863 billion in exports.

The Mercosur pact and its expansion

The India-Mercosur Preferential Trade Agreement was signed on 25 January 2004 and came into force on 1 June 2009, according to India Briefing’s timeline. Mercosur is the Mercado Común del Sur, the South American common market, and India Briefing’s trade tables list Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia as its members. The same report counts concessions on 450 tariff lines from India and 452 from Mercosur.

On 16 October 2025 Brazil’s Vice President and trade minister, Geraldo Alckmin, and Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal agreed in New Delhi that an expansion should be substantial, cover tariff and non-tariff issues, and be concluded within one year of its launch. The launch came on 14 September 2026. Goyal and Uruguay’s Foreign Minister, Mario Lubetkin, who held Mercosur’s rotating presidency, announced negotiations to widen the agreement. The Press Information Bureau (PIB) release says the sides are still finalising terms of reference that will fix its scope and structure.

The same day they signed a first additional protocol under which electronic certificates of origin carry the same legal validity as paper ones, according to India Briefing. DD News reported India-Mercosur trade of US$20.84 billion in 2025. The wider network of agreements is in India’s trade corridors and free trade agreements.

Brazil, a strategic partner since 2006

The External Affairs Ministry’s brief of 13 July 2026 dates the strategic partnership to 2006 and says trade rose by over 25 per cent in 2025, from US$12.20 billion to US$15.21 billion. In the first six months of 2026 it reached US$8.774 billion, up 36.95 per cent on the same months of 2025, with US$3.579 billion of Indian exports and US$5.195 billion of imports. India sells diesel, agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and engineering goods. Brazil sends crude oil, soybean oil, gold, raw sugar and cotton.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Brazil India’s largest trading partner in Latin America on 21 February 2026, during the state visit of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He said both countries are committed to taking trade beyond US$20 billion over five years. DD News reported on 31 August 2026 that the target is now US$30 billion by 2030. The brief lists 11 agreements signed during the Lula visit of 18 to 22 February 2026, among them digital partnership, rare earths and critical minerals, mining for the steel supply chain and electronic certificates of origin.

Indian state companies ONGC Videsh and BPRL have invested US$3.5 billion in Brazilian oil and gas fields, and the brief estimates total Indian investment in Brazil above US$15 billion, against about US$1 billion of Brazilian investment in India. It lists the aircraft maker Embraer among Brazilian firms present in India. It also records that India launched Amazonia-1 in 2021, the first Earth observation satellite designed, built, tested and operated entirely by Brazil. Modi’s state visit to Brasília on 7 and 8 July 2025 followed the BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Mexico and US$11 billion of trade

India is Mexico’s ninth-largest trading partner, and the External Affairs Ministry’s brief as on 15 July 2026 gives trade of US$11.09 billion in 2025. India’s exports were US$9.13 billion and its imports US$1.969 billion, led by crude oil. Cars and parts, pharmaceuticals, engineering goods and chemicals lead what India sells. The brief says over 250 Indian companies operate in Mexico with about US$4 billion invested up to 2024, and 17 major Mexican companies, among them the cinema chain Cinépolis, operate in India.

The brief records that Goyal and Mexico’s Economy Secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, met by video on 21 March 2026 to discuss deepening economic ties. The brief also calls Mexican wheat varieties bred at CIMMYT, with Norman Borlaug and Indian scientists, instrumental in the Green Revolution, a story told in Swaminathan and the Green Revolution.

Argentina, lithium and the Catamarca blocks

On 15 January 2024, Khanij Bidesh India Limited (KABIL) signed an agreement in Catamarca with the province’s state company, Catamarca Minera y Energética Sociedad del Estado (CAMYEN), for five lithium brine blocks covering about 15,703 hectares. The Ministry of Mines release calls it the first lithium exploration and mining project by an Indian government company and puts the project cost at about Rs 200 crore. KABIL received exploration and exclusivity rights, with the right to exploit commercially once lithium is found. The release says Argentina sits in the “Lithium Triangle” with Chile and Bolivia.

The 23 June 2026 brief says trade grew 32.5 per cent in 2025 to US$6.91 billion and ranks India as Argentina’s fifth-largest trading partner. It still describes the Catamarca agreement as a lease for exploration and eventual exploitation, and records oil and gas and heavy-water agreements as well.

Chile and Peru: two agreements under negotiation

India and Chile finalised terms of reference for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement in April 2025. The External Affairs Ministry’s brief says four negotiating rounds have been held, the last in New Delhi in December 2025. It adds that the 2017 expanded preferential agreement grew from 474 to 2,829 tariff lines. In February 2026, more than 80 Indian pharmaceutical companies visited Chile for 580-plus business meetings. The brief gives India-Chile trade as US$5.38 billion in 2025, with Chile’s exports to India mainly copper concentrate and gold.

For Peru, the brief records nine rounds of free trade agreement talks plus an online intersessional meeting. India’s imports from Peru were US$8.87 billion in 2025-26, led by gold and copper, and its exports US$1.15 billion. A PIB note of 18 August 2026 lists Peru and Chile among the new negotiations India has under way.

Payments and digital public infrastructure

A PIB release of 6 February 2026 lists 23 countries with which India has signed memorandums on India Stack, the bundle of digital identity, payment and data tools. Ten are in Latin America or the Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. In Brazil, Modi said on 21 February 2026 that the two countries are working towards a Centre of Excellence for Digital Public Infrastructure.

The Finance Ministry’s ten-year UPI release of 24 August 2026 names 11 countries where UPI operates, and none is in Latin America or the Caribbean. The Peru brief lists an agreement for NPCI International Payments Limited to create a UPI-like platform across Peru. Brazil’s own instant payment system carried 37.4 billion transactions, 14 per cent of the global total, in a PIB table of 8 December 2025 drawn from an ACI Worldwide report. The wider rollout is in India’s digital public infrastructure abroad.

Medicines, training and the Indian communities

The Embassy of India in Mexico City says Mexico imported almost US$180 million of Indian pharmaceuticals in 2023. On 21 February 2026, India’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation and Brazil’s health regulator, the Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária (ANVISA), exchanged a memorandum on sharing information on medicines and medical devices. DD News reported that at the eighth Trade Monitoring Mechanism meeting India asked Brazil for more predictable regulatory pathways for Indian drugs. The background is in how India became the world’s pharmacy.

Training runs through the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme. The briefs count more than 840 Peruvian participants, 375 from Chile, over 350 from Argentina and over 110 from Brazil, with 35 slots a year for Mexico. The Indian communities are about 12,000 in Mexico, 4,000 in Brazil, about 4,000 in Chile, 2,600 in Argentina and around 500 in Peru.