India on Monday unveiled a roadmap to step up trade with Latin American countries by ten times to over $22 billion in the coming years.

Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, who is in Brazil to participate in the UNCTAD XI meeting, released reports prepared by Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and UNCTAD on this at Sau Paulo.

Kamal Nath emphasised on the need for stronger ties between India and the four Mercosur countries comprising Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, a FICCI release in New Delhi said.

Presently, trade between India and Mercosur countries is $2 billion and has the potential to grow to $22 billion, he said.

"The core competencies are complementary and integration in each other's value chains would make the projected trade volumes grow to $22 billion from the existing two billion dollar per annum," he said.

He said mutual understanding of economies and business cultures, transportation links, removal of restrictions and non-trade barriers, facilitation of credit flows and language, need to be initiated to achieve high trade volume.

The study pertained to "Enhancing Trade Potential between India and Mercosur in Chemicals, Petrochemicals and Pharmaceuticals" and "Increasing Bilateral Trade in Creative Industries."

Earlier, a FICCI delegation met Alberto Dumont, Minister of State for Industry of Argentina, and said Argentina did not recognise India as a manufacturing nation for pharmaceutical formulations while it does so for Korea, China, US, EU and Australia.