Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is scheduled to travel to India later this week, with the ambitious objectives of quadrupling bilateral trade and boosting the strategic association that both nations agreed on three years ago, according to dpa. "We need to consolidate this process of strategic association with India to exploit our reciprocal competences," Roberto Jaguaribe - under-secretary general of political affairs at the Brazilian Foreign Ministry - told the agency Estado in an interview published Monday. The diplomat added that, unlike China, India is "a real democracy," does not compete directly with Brazilian producers and has always had an "an active association in international trade" with Brazil. "It's inevitable for Brazil to have a special relationship with India," Jaguaribe said. The two countries form a key alliance in the group of developing countries pushing for industrial countries to cut off subsidies to their farmers and other trade overtures within the World Trade Organization talks. Lula is set to arrive in New Delhi on June 3. He will be accompanied by a group of business leaders from the powerful Brazilian National Confederation of Industry (CNI), in search of opportunities to take part in India's plan to invest 350 billion dollars to improve its infrastructure. Brazilian businesses intend to get involved in deals with India in the fields of IT and biofuels, while the government in Brasilia intends to stimulate bilateral trade to push it up to 10 billion dollars a year by 2010, from the current 2.41 billion dollars a year with a surplus of 537.3 million in favour of India. To boost bilateral trade, Brazil intends to achieve an expansion of the 2005 trade preference agreement between India and South American trade bloc Mercosur, of which Brazil is the natural leader. The deal allowed bilateral trade to jump from 1.207 billion dollars in 2004 to 2.410 billion dollars in 2006. Relations between Brazil and India have become closer in recent years, after both came to lead agricultural nations gathered in the G20 in their demand for an end to the agricultural subsidies that industrialized nations grant their own producers. On June 4, Lula is set to open the first Brazil-India Business Forum, a permanent organism in which 15 companies from each country will be represented. The forum is intended to evaluate business opportunities and chances for bilateral investment. On June 5, Lula will close the business seminar - being called A New Frontier for Business Opportunities. Some 50 Brazilian firms seeking to join India's efforts to improve infrastructure - including the country's largest construction companies - are set to take part in the seminar. The Brazilian president's visit to India is part of a lengthy international tour which Lula will start on Friday in London, where he is set to attend a football game between England and Brazil which will inaugurate the new Wembley Stadium. From India, Lula is to travel on to Morocco for a two-day official visit, before going to Germany to take part in the G8 summit at Heiligendamm as a guest.
