US$50 Billion and Counting

Carolina Gaviria Salazar

journalist and communication strategist

On September 22, in New York, during the High-Level Week of the United Nations General Assembly, the dialogue mechanism between India and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) met. And from that meeting came a figure that should catch our attention: trade between India and Latin America and the Caribbean reached US$50 billion in fiscal year 2025–2026.

At the meeting, India and the CELAC countries expressed their intention to move toward an institutional mechanism that would allow the relationship to be structured more regularly and over the long term. The agenda includes trade, climate change, renewable energy, digital transformation, health, food security, critical minerals, infrastructure, agriculture, space cooperation and capacity building.

Colombia was there.

Our delegation endorsed greater CELAC–India cooperation and identified as priority areas precisely some that are part of the country’s challenges: science, technology and innovation; digital transformation; food security; the pharmaceutical industry; and energy security.

Colombia’s Foreign Ministry also highlighted that trade between the two regions has grown by nearly 145% over the past decade.

And while this conversation was taking place in New York, more than 13,000 kilometers away, India and Mercosur were taking another step.

On September 14, India and the South American bloc announced the start of negotiations to expand their Preferential Trade Agreement, in force since 2009. The goal is to expand the areas covered and create new opportunities for the private sectors on both sides.

Taken separately, these news items might be circumstantial, but together, in such a short time, they are beginning to look like a trend.

India is knocking on several doors at once

What’s interesting is not only that India wants to sell more in Latin America; it is that the conversation is taking on several dimensions: trade, technology, energy, health, agriculture, education, infrastructure, innovation, even space cooperation.

In other words, the relationship is ceasing to be exclusively commercial and becoming a conversation about capabilities. And this matters because Latin America is also looking for ways to engage with a world that has changed.

For decades, the region built much of its international engagement around a few major partners. The United States, China, Europe and intraregional trade itself have occupied much of our attention. India was there, but in a much smaller place in our conversation.

Perhaps that is precisely the problem: we still think of India as a distant market when we should already be thinking of it as a strategic partner.

In December 2025, CELAC organized in Santiago the seminar “India–Latin America and the Caribbean: Emerging Partners in a Transforming Global Economy.” The meeting brought together authorities, diplomats and specialists to discuss how to deepen the relationship.

José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of ECLAC, raised a point then that I find especially relevant at this moment: Latin America needs to diversify its economic relations toward emerging economies such as India, without abandoning its traditional ties with the United States, China, Europe or the region’s own countries: “Integration with the world must be managed intelligently,” Salazar-Xirinachs said, arguing that the region needs to use that integration as a tool to drive growth, productive transformation and mutually beneficial relations with a growing number of partners.

The word that interests me is diversify, because it does not mean replacing. It is not an invitation to stop looking at the United States in order to look at India. Nor to abandon China in order to seek out New Delhi. It means having more options, and the international context forces us to think about it. Supply chains are changing. Trade tensions are rising. Technological competition is intensifying. Economies are seeking to secure energy, food, strategic minerals and digital capabilities, and in that scenario, depending too much on too few markets can become a vulnerability.

ECLAC itself has warned that Latin America faces an international context marked by growing geopolitical and technological rivalry and by a greater “instrumentalization” of economic relations.

Why India?

A country of more than 1.47 billion inhabitants, with an economy that ECLAC describes as one of the most dynamic emerging economies in the world and that, according to the organization, is on track to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2030.

A country with strengths in sectors that align with some of our challenges: pharmaceuticals, technology, digital services, renewable energy, agriculture, manufacturing and talent development. But also a country that can learn from Latin America. Because the relationship should not be conceived as one-way.

Colombia took part in the CELAC–India meeting and backed the creation of a more structured mechanism for relations between the two sides. It also raised specific areas in which there is Colombian interest. But a diplomatic declaration does not build a relationship by itself. We need companies that want to export, universities that want to conduct joint research, entrepreneurs who find markets, researchers who work together, students who can train, governments that know how to identify where complementarities exist, and journalists who begin to cover this relationship more frequently.

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