Chennai: The government planned to set up permanent trade centres in Latin America as part of enhancing business relations between the region and India and also taking into consideration China’s heightened trade, a top government official indicated on Tuesday.

A slew of measures have been taken to explore business opportunities particularly in the Latin American region as China’s trade with the region stood at $140 billion while India was only projected to be $15 billion by 2012, commerce department director Suchismita Palai said.

She said Sao Paulo, Port-of-Spain, Santiago and Buenos Aires have been identified for setting up the trade centres.

However, she declined to give exact figures on how much would be required for setting up these centres, which are likely to come up in a year.

Chinese industrialists ‘have taken on’ (the opportunity to tap the Latin American market) and ‘we are way behind,’ she said, addressing a seminar on ‘India and Latin America: Augmenting Synergies in the Post-Crisis World’ organized by Industry body Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here.

The trade centres would initially focus on areas like light engineering, textiles, gems and jewellery but later would also cover areas like automobile industry, she told reporters.

Helpdesks would come up in places like Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai, for creating more awareness among Indian entrepreneurs on Latin American markets. Besides this, she said Centre was also mulling setting up a dedicated portal for Latin American markets.