Mexico keen to sign Free Trade Agreement with India: Envoy

Mexico is exploring possibilities of signing a Free Trade Agreement with India to boost trade ties between the two countries, a Mexican Envoy said here today.
"We are working on some sort of agreement like the FTA. You should know the Free Trade Agreement with Japan was our very first. We are very excited to have a FTA (with India).", Ambassador of Mexico to India, Melba Pria told reporters.
The Ambassador is on a visit to inaugurate the third Consular Office here and appointing Ramkumar Vardarajan as the Honorary Consul General.
Stating that a "high-level" delegation from Mexico discussed the signing of a trade agreement with India during its visit couple of months ago, she said, "in that high level meeting about 500 goods were identified in the first place for signing the agreement."

"Trade with India has grown up over 400 per cent since 2004. It was around USD 7 billion last year. Major sectors are oil, information technology, automobile and autoparts," she said.
On the number of tourists visiting Mexico from India, she said it was around 55,000 last year as several people after visiting couple of cities in the US visit a Mexican city.

"One-third of the visitor are business travellers," she said adding that pharmaceuticals, autoparts and Information Technology sectors were "growing" very rapidly on trade.
To a query she said there were 60 Indian companies operating in Mexico while it was 13 Mexican companies having presence in India.

Mexico is the largest Latin American investor in India with over USD 800 million invested, she said.