The two countries started negotiations for an FTA in 2017. Five rounds of talks were held until August 2019 before the COVID pandemic disrupted the process.
“We are going to talk again about that (the modalities). Due to the pandemic many things changed so we want to replan additional modalities and our technical teams will hold that conversation,” Gomez has said.
When asked about areas of interest for Peruvian businesses in India, she said Peru’s main interests are in exporting agricultural products like avocados, fresh grapes, and blueberries, and natural resources like gold, copper and calcium phosphates.
Most of the blueberries that are sold in India are sourced from Peru, she said adding the proposed agreement will at least deal with trade in goods and services.”If areas like investments are to be made part of it will be decided by the technical teams,” she said.India-Peru trade in 2022-23 stood at USD 3 billion. While India’s imports from Peru were USD 2.2 billion, exports stood at USD 865 million.India’s main exports to Peru include automobiles, motorcycles and three-wheelers, polyester and cotton yarns, pharmaceuticals, iron and steel products, plastic products, and tyres. Main imports from Peru are gold, copper, synthetic filaments, phosphates of calcium, fresh grapes, fish flour and blueberries.
“In manufactured products also we are interested in finding space in India,” the minister said. She was here recently for the India-LAC conclave.
She added that Peru has free trade agreements with all major economies like the US, EU, China and Japan and is also a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“We are not competing in the same product. Our economies are complementary, which is very helpful in the negotiation process,” she said.
On investments, she said there is huge scope for Indian investments.
“We are in the centre of South America and we are developing a new port at Chancy (80 km north of Lima). It is going to be ready next year and would be able to take in bigger ships and reduce time to connect with Asian countries. That could be an opportunity for Indian businesses to manufacture products there,” Gomez said.
“We want Mahindra, Tata and all the Indian brands doing business in Peru. Indian automobiles, two-wheelers, and three-wheelers are very well known there…We need to have your products (manufactured) there in order to compete with the rest of the countries we are importing from,” she said.
