MERCOSUR Grouping:
The Prime Minister recently told the visiting Paraguay President that India and Paraguay can work together to further expand the Preferential Trade Agreement with the trading bloc MERCOSUR.
- The Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR for its Spanish initials) is a South American regional economic organization.
- It was created in 1991 by signing the Treaty of Asunción.
- Objective is facilitating the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people among the member countries.
- It originally comprised Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay as its members.
- Bolivia and Venezuela joined it later. (Venezuela has been suspended since December 1, 2016).
- Mercosur also counts Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Suriname as associate members.
- Headquarters: Montevideo, Uruguay.
- Its official working languages are Spanish and Portuguese.
- The bloc’s highest decision-making body, the Common Market Council, provides a high-level forum for coordinating foreign and economic policy.
- The group consists of the foreign and economic ministers of each member state, or their equivalent, and decisions are made by consensus.
- The group’s presidency rotates every six months among its full members.
- It is the fourth largest integrated market after the European Union (EU), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and ASEAN.
- India and MERCOSUR signed a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) in 2004.
