Indian minister Piyush Goyal unveils India-UAE CEPA in Dubai

28 Mar '22

2 min read

Pic: Twitter/Piyush Goyal

Indian commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal yesterday unveiled the India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). The CEPA was signed on February 18 in New Delhi during the India-UAE Virtual Summit. Goyal is in Dubai to participate in ‘Investopia Summit’ and ‘World Government Summit’ being held today and tomorrow respectively.

The CEPA is the first deep and full free trade agreement to be signed by India with any country in the past decade. The agreement will cover trade in goods, rules of origin, trade in services, technical barriers to trade (TBT), sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, dispute settlement, movement of natural persons, telecom, customs procedures, pharmaceutical products, government procurement, intellectual property rights, investment, digital trade and cooperation in other areas.

The CEPA covers almost all the tariff lines dealt in by India (11,908 tariff lines) and the United Arab Emirates (7581 tariff lines) respectively, according to an Indian government release.

India will benefit from preferential market access provided by the UAE on over 97 per cent of its tariff lines which account for 99 per cent of Indian exports to the UAE in value terms, especially for all labour-intensive sectors like textiles, leather, footwear, sports goods, plastics, furniture, agricultural and wood products, engineering products and medical devices.

India will also be offering preferential access to the UAE on over 90 per cent of its tariff lines, including lines of export interest to the UAE.

As regards trade in services, India has offered market access to the UAE in around 100 sub-sectors, while Indian service providers will have access to around 111 sub-sectors from the 11 broad service sectors like business services; communication services; construction and related engineering services; distribution services; educational services; environmental services; financial services; health related and social services; tourism and travel related services; recreational, cultural and sporting services; and transport services.

Both sides have also agreed to a separate annex on pharmaceuticals to facilitate access of Indian pharmaceuticals products, especially automatic registration and marketing authorisation in 90 days for products meeting specified criteria.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)

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