- India on the way to becoming a strategic partner of Latin America
The economic power from Asia is slowly but steadily expanding its presence in the region. South and Central America hope that this will lead to diversification in cooperation with the major geopolitical powers.
Brazil's semi-state oil company Petrobras deliberately chose the stage for the announcement. At the beginning of February, Claudio Romeo Schlosser, director of logistics, commercialization and markets at Petrobras, said at an energy forum in Rio de Janeiro: "We are expanding our customer base internationally. Until now, it has been very concentrated in China." He continued: "We will sign a contract with the Indian state-owned company for the delivery of 24 million barrels of oil."
In practice, the delivery volume to India has so far been very low, but this is set to change in the medium term with a delivery contract with India's second-largest refinery. Brazil's partner will be the Indian state-owned company Bharat Petroleum. The fact that Brazil and India are both members of the BRICS alliance and often represent similar positions should give the partnership a further boost.
With its public position, Brasilia is underlining India's growing importance in the midst of global geopolitical realignment, just a few weeks after formally rejecting China's Silk Road project. The South Asian country with a population of around 1.4 billion is slowly but steadily expanding its presence between the Rio Bravo in the north and Tierra del Fuego in the south.
In the midst of geopolitical conflicts, India is also attractive to the region because New Delhi is viewed as independent and largely neutral in the intrigues between the USA, Russia and China.
There are similar developments in neighboring Argentina: In January, the state-owned Argentine oil company YPF signed a letter of intent with three Indian companies to export up to ten million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year.
YPF Managing Director Horacio Marin is relying on future customers from Asia for his own expansion plans: "We are convinced that the country has the opportunity to become an energy exporter and to achieve the goal pursued by the entire industry of generating revenues of 30 billion US dollars over the next ten years." The Argentine-Indian agreement also includes cooperation in the exploration and production of lithium.
"India's foreign policy in the past has always been characterized by a policy of non-alignment," Sabrina Olivera, coordinator of the South Asia working group at the Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI), told DW.
Later, the policy of non-alignment developed into a strategic orientation that is now referred to as "strategic autonomy." "This means that India maintains relations with as many actors as possible without committing itself or entering into alliances," says Olivera. India is now always at the negotiating table for all global problems, but is not committed at the military level.
Compared to the USA, China or Europe, India still has a relatively small presence in Latin America. For India, however, this also means that Latin America has enormous growth potential.
New Delhi is pursuing an approach of networking more closely on a political, economic and cultural level. For example, India sent medicines to Cuba after the devastating hurricanes and received a correspondingly positive media response in the Caribbean.
In resource-rich Chile, Indian Ambassador Abhilasha Joshi announced: "For us, Chile is a starting point for the rest of Latin America."
India kicked off this development two years ago with a highly acclaimed visit by Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to Panama - according to local media reports, the first in six decades. "Since Prime Minister Modi came to power, our relations with Latin America and the Caribbean have developed in a new direction," said Jaishankar, thus giving the starting signal for a new relevance of Latin America for India.
According to the portal "Dialogo Politico", the trade volume between India and Latin America amounts to 40 billion US dollars (2023). Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Peru are the most important trading partners in the region.
India mainly imports raw materials and exports cars and car parts, pharmaceutical products and textiles. In the last ten years, trade between the two regions of the world has grown by 145 percent, but is still relatively small compared to China (480 billion).
"India is well aware that it does not have the same resources, neither material nor military, as China. Nevertheless, India is trying to reduce China's lead a little," says South Asia expert Sabrina Olivera. "The fact that India is the only democracy in Asia gives the country a greater trust bonus in Latin America, where there are democratic regimes in almost all countries, than that enjoyed by China."
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