Piyush Goyal : said the India-Oman CEPA creates new opportunities for investment, commerce, and mobility.: India-Oman CEPA opens new avenues in trade, mobility, investment
Piyush Goyal: the minister of commerce and industry, said on Friday that the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between India and Oman would further strengthen bilateral relations and represent a substantial change in India’s commercial participation.
The India-Oman Comprehensive Economic Partnership pact (CEPA) will energize bilateral interaction for the 21st century, Goyal said, quoting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was present when the trade pact was inked yesterday in Oman.
According to Goyal, the deal is strategically significant for India’s long-term geopolitical and economic objectives.
The business minister highlighted Oman’s membership in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and pointed out that India is only the second nation with whom Muscat has a free trade agreement.
In 2006, the United States and Oman, both GCC members, inked a free trade agreement. Goyal said, “Oman has selected India as only the second nation for such an agreement after nearly two decades.”
“India was the first country with which Oman ever signed a bilateral agreement,” Goyal said, highlighting the historical depth of the two countries’ relationship. This illustrates how important Oman’s connection with India is.
India’s trade strategy has been radically refocused, according to the minister.
“India has completely changed its approach to trade. “We are now concentrating on nations where we complement rather than compete,” he said, noting that this strategy creates “vast opportunities for our youth, industries, manufacturing sector and services.”
Oman’s decision to permit the first-ever sale of raw marble blocks to India is one of the major results of the CEPA. According to Goyal, this would guarantee higher quality at competitive rates, create jobs, facilitate local processing and value addition, and lessen the need to import completed marble from nations like Turkey.
Along with highlighting prospects in labor-intensive industries, he pointed out that roughly 700,000 Indians now live in Oman and contribute about Rs 18,000 crore in remittances every year.
He said that the CEPA pact creates “enormous opportunities,” with Oman eager to work with India in manufacturing, medicines, food security, and space. Fast-track approvals and automatic certifications for recognized factories and goods would be advantageous to Indian pharmaceutical enterprises.
With increased quotas for inter-corporate transfers and longer stays, mobility provisions have been improved. “With new provisions allowing employment generation for Indian workers within permitted limits, Indian investments in Oman can also serve as a gateway to the GCC, Africa, and parts of Central Europe,” he added.
He stated that AYUSH, wellness, healthcare, and medical tourism would all be promoted by the CEPA.
As part of a plan to establish trade deals with developed economies that do not compete with our labor-intensive interests and provide chances for Indian enterprises, India has inked two free trade agreements in the recent six months, the first being with the United Kingdom.
India receives historic tariff cuts from Oman thanks to the CEPA. 99.38% of India’s exports to Oman are covered by Oman’s zero-duty access on 98.08% of its tariff lines. Gems and jewelry, textiles, leather, footwear, sports goods, plastics, furniture, engineering products, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, and vehicles are among the key labor-intensive industries that obtain complete tariff removal. Of the aforementioned, 97.96% of Tariff Lines are eligible for immediate tariff removal.
94.81% of India’s imports from Oman by value are covered by the 77.79% of its total tariff lines (12,.556) that are being liberalized. The offer is primarily a tariff-rate quota (TRQ) based tariff liberalization for goods of export importance to Oman that are sensitive to India.
Sensitive goods, particularly agricultural products like dairy, tea, coffee, rubber, and tobacco products; gold and silver bullion; jewelry; other labor-intensive products like footwear and sports goods; and scrap of numerous base metals, have been kept in the exclusion category by India without any concessions to protect its interests.
Additionally, the CEPA allows Indian businesses to invest 100% of their foreign direct investment in Oman’s key service industries via commercial presence, creating several opportunities for India’s services sector to grow in the area. In keeping with a forward-thinking strategy to promote worker protection and labor mobility, both parties have also decided to conduct further talks on social security coordination when Oman’s contributory social security system is put into place.
Since the United States of America in 2006, Oman has not signed a bilateral deal with any other nation till now.