India to sign PTA with Chile tomorrow

New Delhi, Mar 7: A Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) between India and Chile will be signed here tomorrow in the presence of Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath by Commerce Secretary S N Menon and Ambassador of Chile Jorge Heine in India.

During the visit of the Chilean President to India in January 2005, a Framework Agreement on Economic Cooperation was signed between India and Chile on January 20, 2005.

This Agreement envisaged a PTA between the two sides. The Framework Agreement also provided for a Joint Study Group to identify the potential for cooperation between the two countries in trade in goods and services, investments and other areas of economic cooperation.

Chile is one of the major Latin American countries with a GDP of 76.3 billion dollar and a global trade of 53.2 billion dollar during 2004. Its trade surplus was 8.5 billion dollar during the year.

Endowed with rich natural resources Chile is the world's leading producer of copper and its total resources are estimated to represent 25 per cent of world's proven reserves of copper.

Since the early nineties, the Chilean economy has been one of the best performing in Latin America, with an average growth of 5.5 per cent during the period 1990-2003. The growth has been about 6.1 per cent during 2004 and 5.7 per cent during the first six months of 2005. There are no restrictions on imports and exports in Chile.

UNI