India and MERCOSUR signed a protocol granting electronic trade certificates equal legal status to paper ones, reducing export costs.

The First Additional Protocol to the India-MERCOSUR Preferential Trade Agreement was signed on 14 September, putting electronic Certificates of Origin on equal legal footing with paper certificates for the first time.

These certificates matter because customs officials use them to decide whether a shipment qualifies for lower, preferential tariffs.

Here’s the part that actually helps businesses. Once a certificate is issued and signed electronically by an authorised official, it will carry the same legal weight as a physical stamped document.

That sounds like a small technical fix, but for exporters, it can mean faster verification and fewer manual steps at every shipment.

It’s worth being clear about what this protocol does not do. It doesn’t add new tariff cuts or expand the list of goods covered.

India currently offers preferential tariffs on 450 product lines under this agreement, while MERCOSUR offers concessions on 452. Those numbers stay exactly where they were. This digital push didn’t happen in isolation either.

India had already rolled out an Open API facility for Certificates of Origin through its Trade Connect e-Platform on 7 September, letting exporters link their own business software directly to the government’s system instead of retyping shipment data by hand.

On the same day the protocol was signed, India and MERCOSUR also kicked off talks to expand the underlying trade agreement itself.

Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Uruguay’s Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin announced the start of those negotiations, though the two sides still need to finalise the terms that will shape how far the expansion goes. The stakes here aren’t small.

India’s trade with the MERCOSUR bloc touched around $20.84 billion in 2025, with Brazil alone accounting for over $15 billion of that in the last financial year. Both countries are now targeting $30 billion in bilateral trade by 2030.

None of this becomes operational immediately though. The protocol still needs India and MERCOSUR to complete internal procedures and formally notify each other before exporters can actually use it.

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