Brazil is preparing for the Carnival this weekend, when the nation actually involves a halt, however hectic preparations are underway in Brasilia for President Lula da Silva’s upcoming go to to India with a enterprise delegation of 260 firms.
The most important-ever Brazilian delegation to India marks the end result of the highest-level engagement between the 2 international locations over the previous few years — in a difficult geopolitical state of affairs. This may be the Brazilian chief’s final main international engagement earlier than Brazil will get into election mode for the presidential polls in October this 12 months.
Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bilateral assembly with Lula in Brasilia in July 2025, once they mentioned the growth of bilateral commerce, the Brazilian chief’s journey to New Delhi, from February 19 to 21, is being given high precedence by the Brazilian authorities.
Celso Amorim, who serves as Lula’s principal international coverage adviser, sees the go to as a possibility for collaboration in strategic sectors between two rising economies. “Cooperation between Brazil and India will be very broad, however I might spotlight above all two domains: expertise and defence,” Mr. Amorim instructed The Hindu.
“Brazil and India have developed, every in its personal manner, essential facets of biotechnology too. In house science, India has given us an important instance of how it’s attainable to attain nice accomplishments with out essentially resorting to the expertise of the wealthy international locations,” mentioned Mr. Amorim, who has earlier served as Overseas Minister and Defence Minister below Presidents Lula and Dilma Rouseff, respectively.
Because the 2025 bilateral assembly, the Brazilian facet has been working to strengthen its commerce ties with India. Jorge Viana, head of the Brazilian Commerce and Funding Promotion Company (Apex Brazil), instructed The Hindu that Lula requested him final 12 months to place collectively a delegation as a part of his efforts to broaden industrial ties with India.
“In Delhi, the President will take part within the Synthetic Intelligence summit, however we’re additionally organising an enormous enterprise assembly in collaboration with our Overseas Ministry. Apex can also be opening an workplace in Delhi as we see India, probably the most populous nation, as one of many economies with the best potential for development,” Mr. Viana instructed The Hindu from Brasília. “Until final 12 months, India was our tenth greatest buying and selling accomplice, however now in current months it has been competing to be the fifth. It might turn out to be the third greatest.”
In 2025, Brazil bought Indian merchandise price $8.5 billion, whereas Brazilian exports to India totalled $7 billion — primarily in oil, sugar, molasses, fat and vegetable oils and iron ore sectors. Nonetheless, Mr. Viana says, Brazilians now wish to diversify their exports to India.
“We’ve got 260 Brazilian firms attending the occasion that Apex is organising in Delhi. We’ve got representatives from all strategic sectors. We’re taking lots of people from the well being space, together with our Well being Minister, as a result of India is a serious provider of medicines to Brazil. We even have essential firms of ethanol and biofuel onboard as a result of there’s already an settlement between Brazil and India within the space.” He added that there may very well be a serious announcement concerning the arrival of Embraer, the Brazilian plane manufacturing agency, in India.
With vitality safety and sustainability reshaping international alignments — and threatening to rupture the prevailing world order amid intensifying geopolitical rivalries — the Brazilian facet is eager to deepen engagement with India in these areas. “We’ve got to work collectively for the vitality transition, with out forgetting that we nonetheless have a big commerce in oil. We can not, from one hour to the subsequent, abandon oil, however we do need to work in order that the world is extra sustainable. And sustainable not solely from the financial and vitality viewpoint, but additionally from political viewpoint,” says Mr. Amorim, who has been one of the vital influential Brazilian voices in worldwide affairs for 20 years.
Whereas commerce could dominate Lula’s agenda in Delhi, Brazil can also be India’s presidency of BRICS in 2026 to additional advance the dialog on international governance and multilateralism which is below menace. For Mr. Amorim, the grouping should debate on reforming the worldwide order to replicate the pursuits of the International South.
“It is crucial that the Indian presidency of BRICS leads this dialogue concerning the present world order and easy methods to change it. Everyone knows the wrestle there’s for the growth of the UN Safety Council. A world with out guidelines is a really tough world. India and Brazil have at all times labored with guidelines — the foundations that they helped to construct and that benefited us. And that is solely attainable inside a balanced multilateral system, which BRICS has to assist strengthen and rebuild,” mentioned the adviser to Lula.
With U.S. President Donald Trump throwing out the rulebook on worldwide commerce, rising economies have begun to discover extra commerce with different international locations and blocs. Only a few weeks earlier than India signed a Free Commerce Settlement (FTA) with the EU, the South American commerce bloc Mercosur, which Brazil is a part of, additionally finalised its pact with the Europeans. Now, the long-pending Mercosur-India FTA can also come up for severe dialogue throughout Lula’s go to.
“The stress of the U.S. with the entire world has generated alternatives for international locations like Brazil, which haven’t any disputes with anybody. The Mercosur–EU settlement is transferring ahead nicely. Although it’s a multilateral settlement and entails many tariffs, we’ll talk about it with the Indian facet,” mentioned Mr. Viana, who’s a member of Lula’s Staff Social gathering and an in depth confidant of the President.
Brazil is but to agree on a commerce take care of the U.S. However, with the largest-ever enterprise delegation to India in his third time period as president, the Brazilian chief is hanging large offers with a fellow BRICS member earlier than returning dwelling after the Carnival is over.
Printed – February 11, 2026 04:21 pm IST
