Loading…
Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal met Chile's Vice-Minister of International Economic Relations, Paula Estevez Weinstein, in Santiago to review progress on the proposed India-Chile Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.
Both sides reaffirmed the target of concluding the negotiations within 2026, four rounds having been completed since the Terms of Reference were signed in May 2025.
Secure supply chains for critical minerals, especially copper and lithium, are a central Indian interest, while Chile is pressing for more processing of its minerals at home.
The CEPA would build on the India-Chile Preferential Trade Agreement of 2006, whose expanded version took effect in 2017, and widen coverage to services, investment, MSMEs and digital trade.
Chile occupies a long, narrow strip of the south-western coast of South America, wedged between the Andes to the east and the South Pacific to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the north-east and Argentina to the east, with the Drake Passage separating it from Antarctica in the far south. Its capital is Santiago. The climate runs from desert in the north through a Mediterranean belt in the centre to a cool, damp south. The Atacama Desert in the north is the driest non-polar desert in the world and holds the lithium-bearing salt flats; the Loa River is the country's principal river. Chile lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire and contains Ojos del Salado, the world's highest active volcano at 6,880 metres and the second-highest peak in South America.
Chile, Argentina and Bolivia together hold the bulk of the world's lithium brine reserves; India's outreach to Chile is part of a wider Latin American critical-minerals strategy that also runs through Argentina.
The joint-venture vehicle set up to acquire overseas critical-mineral assets, and the state instrument that complements a trade agreement like the CEPA.
Compare with the India-UAE CEPA and the India-Australia ECTA; a CEPA covers goods, services and investment, unlike the narrower PTA that currently governs India-Chile trade.
Chile's seismic and volcanic geography, a standard physical-geography link that examiners pair with news about the country.
GS Paper II > India and its bilateral relations; GS Paper III > Indian Economy - external sector; GS Paper I > World Physical Geography
General Awareness > International Agreements and World Geography
General Awareness > International Trade Agreements
Consider the following pairs: I. Woman Farmer : 2026 II. Sustainable Tourism : 2027 III. Peace and Trust : 2025 IV. Asteroid : 2029 How many... correctly matched?
Answer: All the four
Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement - a broad trade agreement covering goods, services, investment and regulatory cooperation, wider than a preferential trade agreement.
The shallowest form of trade agreement, reducing tariffs on a selected list of products only.
The document that fixes the scope, sequence and coverage of a trade negotiation before formal rounds begin; India and Chile signed theirs on 8 May 2025.
Minerals such as lithium, cobalt and copper that are essential to clean-energy and high-technology manufacturing and whose supply is geographically concentrated.
The zone spanning parts of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia that holds most of the world's lithium brine reserves.