India–Chile trade: what the 2025 numbers change

According to the Embassy of India in Santiago, trade between India and Chile went from US$3.84 billion in 2024 to US$5.38 billion in 2025. Chile is now India’s fifth-largest trading partner in Latin America and the Caribbean.

That is a jump of about 40% in a single year, and most of it came from one direction. Chilean shipments to India rose from US$2.6 billion to just under US$4 billion, led by gold and minerals. Indian exports to Chile grew far more modestly, from US$1.24 billion to roughly US$1.41 billion.

It is worth being clear about what that means. The headline growth is largely a commodity story. The manufactured-goods trade that most companies actually operate in is the smaller half, and it is growing slowly. That is not a reason to ignore the corridor, but it is a reason to be precise about which part of it you are entering.

Why Chile is a useful entry point

Chile has built one of the densest networks of trade agreements in the world: roughly three dozen agreements covering more than sixty economies. Nearly all of its trade moves under some preferential framework. For an Indian exporter, that lowers the tariff friction on a first shipment and makes Chile a reasonable place to learn how to sell in Spanish before committing to larger markets.

India and Chile have operated under a Preferential Trade Agreement since 2007, expanded in 2017 to cover 2,829 tariff lines. In 2025 both governments opened negotiations for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, and several rounds have already taken place. Over the next few years access is more likely to widen than narrow.

Chile is also a market where contracts are generally honoured and payment terms mean what they say. For companies used to more improvisation, that predictability is worth something on its own.

Why India, if you are buying

For Chilean and Latin American buyers, the case for India is manufacturing depth at prices Chile cannot match domestically. India remains one of the faster-growing large economies, with recent IMF projections putting medium-term growth in the mid-6% range.

The categories already moving between the two countries give a reasonable map of where the fit is. India sends Chile automobiles and auto components, pharmaceuticals, electrical machinery, textiles and footwear, chemicals, agri-food products, iron and steel, and leather goods. Chile sends India copper concentrates, molybdenum, iodine, gold, inorganic chemicals and fruit.

Investment is where the relationship is clearly still early. Indian investment in Chile is estimated at around US$620 million, and Chilean investment in India at around US$118 million. For two economies of this size, those are small numbers.

What actually goes wrong

Rising trade volume does not make an individual deal easier. The failures we hear about are boringly consistent.

A Chilean buyer finds an Indian supplier online, gets a good price, and discovers after paying a deposit that the company is a trading house with no factory behind it. An Indian exporter meets six distributors at a trade fair in Santiago, follows up twice in English, and hears nothing back. An approved sample does not match what arrives in the container, and by then the goods are paid for.

None of those are trade-policy problems. They are execution problems. Nobody verified the supplier, nobody followed up in Spanish, nobody was standing in the factory before the production run started.

Where this leaves you

If you are an Indian company, Chile is a manageable first market in Spanish-speaking Latin America, with preferential tariffs already in place and a wider agreement network behind it. Expect to need local-language follow-up for months rather than weeks.

If you are a Chilean or Latin American company, India will reward you on price and capacity, and it will punish vagueness. A clear specification, a verified supplier and someone checking production are worth more than a better quotation.

Either way, the numbers tell you the corridor is open. They do not tell you who to trust, and that is the part that takes work on the ground.

Insights contain general business information and do not constitute legal, tax, customs, regulatory or technical advice.