CEPA To Benefit India And UAE In Big Way: Goyal

Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Sunday unveiled the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at a press conference during his visit to the UAE, where he will participate in the ‘Investopia Summit’ and ‘World Government Summit’ on 28 March 2022 and 29 March 2022, respectively.

India-UAE CEPA was signed on 18 February 2022 in New Delhi during the India-UAE Virtual Summit held between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.

As per the press statement, the India-UAE CEPA is the first deep and full free trade agreement to be signed by India with any country in the past decade. 

CEPA is a comprehensive agreement, which will cover trade in goods, rules of origin, trade in services, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, dispute settlement, movement of natural persons, telecom, digital trade and cooperation in other areas.

The statement added that CEPA provides for an institutional mechanism to encourage and improve trade between the two countries. The CEPA between India and the UAE covers almost all the tariff lines dealt in by India (11,908 tariff lines) and the UAE (7581 tariff lines) respectively. 

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 such as gems and jewellery, textiles, leather, footwear, sports goods, plastics, furniture, agricultural and wood products, engineering products, medical devices, and automobiles.

The negotiations for India-UAE CEPA were concluded in a record span of 88 days. The agreement is expected to enter into force on 01 May 2022.