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Trade pact inked withUAE to set GCC template
Adopting the same template would mean the GCC nations may largely extend their market access to Indian goods and services barring specific items that have cultural and religious sensitivities of the region.
The free-trade agreement signed between India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on February 18 could be the template for another pact with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a bloc of six nations in the Middle East, as New Delhi aspires to boost its goods and services exports to the entire Arab world, India's envoy to the UAE told ET.
Adopting the same template would mean the GCC nations - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE - may largely extend their market access to Indian goods and services barring specific items that have cultural and religious sensitivities of the region. In the UAE pact, the text of which was released only on Sunday, the Gulf nation placed just 187 tariff lines (out of a total of 7,851) in the negative list, many of those such as tobacco, wines and spirits being considered sin items there.
"Work on the India-GCC FTA has resumed. There is a possibility that the same architecture of the India-UAE CEPA (Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement) will be followed here," ambassador Sunjay Sudhir said.
The process of inking a free trade pact with the GCC was envisaged in 2007 only to be put in cold storage after several rounds of talks. Another officer connected to the development - Srikar Reddy, joint secretary in the department of commerce - added that UAE's exclusion list comprises items of mere 0.7% of Indian current exports in value terms.
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