The surplus agricultural capacity of Latin America is useful to India’s food security in the long term, said former Indian Ambassador to Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, R. Viswanathan here at GITAM Deemed to be University on Saturday.
He was delivering the distinguished lecture on “Doing Business with Latin America” arranged by the Ministry of External Affairs.
Addressing the gathering, he said that India faces serious water shortage and the water table in the main agricultural provinces including Punjab are going down due to indiscriminate and unsustainable pumping of groundwater for irrigation of water-intensive crops such as rice and sugar cane.
On the other hand, South America has vast tracts of arable land and can bring in millions of hectares under cultivation with abundant water reserves as well as technology and best practices, he said.
Latin America has the potential to increase production to feed another 500 million people which is highly helpful to India, he added.
Mr. Viswanathan, said that the competition from Latin American countries in crude and edible oil sectors have put pressure on the monopoly suppliers.
He said that Latin America contributes to India’s strategic energy and food security by supplying 12% of India’s global imports of 117 billion dollars of crude and 22% of India’s vegetable oil.
He mentioned that India was the third largest global destination of Latin American exports in 2018.
He observed that the trend has started since 2010 when the Indian exporters started exploring the Latin American market more seriously particularly even with longer shipping time and heavier freight cost, Indian goods have become competitive in Latin America.
He said that Indian firms have invested over $10 billion in Latin America in sectors such as energy, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, auto parts and IT.
Latin American firms have invested about a billion dollars in India in areas such as soft drinks, multiplexes, theme parks and auto parts. This is a good time to accelerate the economic push into Latin America which has started attaching importance to India, he added.
GITAM Deemed to be University Vice-Chancellor K. Sivaramakrishna presided over the function. GITAM vice-president M. Gangadhra Rao, GITAM Institute of Management Director Y .Gowtham Rao and programme coordinator Radha Raghuramapathruni participated.
