Portuguese-speaking Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy and an important emerging market in that region, especially for drugs and pharmaceuticals, is fast emerging as a vast new market for India’s exports.

         From January till November 2000, India’s exports of $237.88 million to Brazil comprised primarily chemicals and pharmaceuticals, alongside dyes and dye intermediates, organic and inorganic compounds, agrochemicals, cosmetics, toiletries, and castor oil. With the overall bilateral trade at $432.28 million, India enjoys a trade surplus of $43.48 million in its favour.

         Dr Roberto Nobrega, executive vice-president of CEBI, the Portuguese acronym for Brazil-India Business Council, says: “These figures do not reflect the enormous trade potential that exists between the two countries, even thougth Brazilian industrialists and importers are now recognising India as a significant trading partner”. He notes that India accounts for a paltry 0.4 per cent of Brazil’s total trade amounting to $110 billion and this situation can be remedied if Indian business were to start thinking in terms of a two-way traffic. Nobrega has been interacting with India since early 1987 and has been championing India’s cause in Brazil and other Latin American countries in the face of the US’ commercial hegemony. This despite the devaluation of the Brazilian reais from 1.2 to 1.9 to the dollar since january 1999, and recession in the domestic industry, wich had dampened its raw material imports from India.

  “This should not come as a dampener,” says Kishore Chokhani, president of Chemexcil, set up by the commerce ministry in 1963. “Our exports will show na upward trend once again this year with the Brazilian economy anticipated to grow by 3 per cent.” Chokhani maintains that despite the difficult conditions in 1999 and 2000, Indian exporters and export promotion councils have relentlessly continued with their efforts to enthuse Brazilian businesses about Indian goods, especially drugs and pharmaceuticals. Numerous delegations and individual exporters visited Brasil and participated in several trade fairs in São Paulo that concerned the pharmaceutical, garment, textile, and engineering segments, he adds.

         The efforts have apparently paid dividends, as a number of Indian pharma companies such as Dr Reddy’s, Core Pharma, Cipla, Hetero Drugs, Medicorp, Lupin, and Aurobindo today export bulk drugs and finished products to Brazil. Observer Nobrega, “Last year Brazil imported pharmaceuticals worth $2 billion from the US, compared with just $40 million from India, much of that for combating HIV.” Brazil imports 87 per cent of its pharmaceutical requirements; the balance is indigenously produced.

         Nobrega suggests that India look at certain technologies that Brazil can offer. “We have advanced technologies for the processed fruit industry, leather processing, alcohol manufacture, and petroleum derivatives like wax and paraffin,” he remarks. “Our petroleum industry is particularly attractive as we have developed the technology for drilling for offshore oil at depths of 2.000 metres off the brasilian coast.” He believes that the cultural and economic similarities between the two countries should be reflected in greater numbers of joint ventures. Besides, Brazil is also interested in opening up its doors to other fast-growth Indian sectors as software, engineering, and pharma equipment, where India holds na edge globally.

Both Nobrega and CEBI president Amaury Esberard, who has visited India twice in recent times, have been organising India-specific trade fairs in São Paulo, wich they feel will be very important for Indo-Brazilian trade. CEBI, for instance, has already booked space for nine Indian companies in the India pavilion at the São Paulo Foreign Commerce Exhibition scheduled for July. Indicating that his country’s relatively underdeveloped northeastern region has emerged as a huge market for two-wheelers, accounting for a fourth of Brazil’s two-wheeler market, he says Indian two-wheeler manufactures should exploit this market. He also sees much opportunity for Indian exports of equipment and machinery for the energy sector, which is a high-investment sector in his country. Other core sectors are telecommunications, garments, and fine rice. “Nothing hinders India from foraying into Brazil,” says Nobrega. “The sky’s the limit.”