India and Brazil decide to bolster trade ties

Aiming to scale up economic engagement, India and Brazil on Thursday decided to boost ties in sectors such as infrastructure, trade and investment and mining, besides exploring opportunities in nuclear energy sphere.

At the seventh India-Brazil Joint Commission Meeting (JCM), co-chaired by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Brazilian counterpart Mauro Vieira, both sides resolved to exploit the “full potential” of the strategic partnership, with a particular focus on ramping up trade ties.

India and Brazil, both having huge markets, are part of a number of important bloc including BRICS (Brazil Russia, India, China and South Africa) and IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) and they work closely in various multilateral forums.

Strongly pitching for concerted global efforts to deal with terrorism, Swaraj and Vieira condemned direct or indirect financial assistance to terror groups, saying international community must focus on choking channels of their fundings.

“They urged the international community to cooperate with urgency to conclude and adopt the draft Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism in the United Nations at the earliest,” said a joint statement.

It said both the countries stressed that the UN has a central role in coordinating international action against terrorism, which must be conducted in accordance with international law.

On nuclear energy sector, both sides, in pursuance of recent discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Dilma Rousseff, agreed to further explore mutually beneficial cooperation.

Swaraj and Vieira reviewed cooperation of the two countries in the defence sector and agreed to strengthen joint efforts on promoting cyber security, combating cybercrime, and improving cooperation between law enforcement agencies.“Both the ministers stressed their full commitment to promote a secure international maritime domain freedom of navigation in accordance with international law and norms. Towards this end, both sides are working on signing a Technical Agreement for White Shipping Information Sharing,” the statement said.