Indian and Omani officials had met in New Delhi to expedite implementation of a trade deal which has already been signed. Bilateral trade stands at over $10 billion currently with the West Asian country.
Nearly 7 lakh Indian nationals reside in Oman, including Indian merchant families with a presence of over 200–300 years, with annual remittances of around $2 billion.
Oman has offered zero-duty access on 98.08% of its tariff lines, covering 99.38% of India’s exports to Oman. All major labour-intensive sectors including Gems & Jewellery, Textiles, leather, footwear, sports goods, plastics, furniture, agricultural products, engineering products, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and Automobiles receive full tariff elimination.
Out of the above, immediate tariff elimination is being offered on 97.96% Tariff Lines. India is offering tariff liberalization on 77.79% of its total tariff lines (12,556) which covers 94.81% of India’s imports from Oman by value.
For the products of export interest to Oman and which are sensitive to India, the offer is mostly a tariff-rate quota (TRQ) based tariff liberalization.
To safeguard its interest, sensitive products have been kept in the exclusion category by India without offering any concessions, especially agricultural products, including dairy, tea, coffee, rubber, and tobacco products; gold and silver bullion, jewellery; other labour-intensive products such as footwear, sports goods; and scrap of many base metals.
With India’s export share in Oman’s global imports basket at 5.31% out of the latter’s global services imports of $12.52 billion, India’s Commerce Ministry has projected significant untapped potential for Indian service providers in sectors like Computer Related Services, Business and Professional Services, Audio-visual Services, Research and Development, Education and Health Services to promote high-value job creation and support commercial engagement between both countries.
On whether there were any plans to curb gold imports, the Minister said that he won’t be able to comment as it’s not my subject.
The Minister indicated that challenges remain in India-Chile FTA talks, due to differences in size of both economies, even as India remains hopeful of a good deal for critical minerals with Chile.
India had hosted a Ministerial delegation from Chile as both countries look to finalise a trade deal, the first with critical minerals as a separate chapter. While Indian companies are already eligible to participate in mineral auctions for Copper mines in Chile, government sources had earlier pointed out that India’s current per capita consumption of Copper is less than half that of developed countries and will grow substantially as the country develops further.
While India is trying to secure its future supply chains, Peru and Chile are trying to diversify their trade destinations to prevent a single or a few countries from stockpiling their mineral deposits to control market prices in future.
Sources explained that despite the sale of Copper ore at the rates of refined Copper, China is paying a premium by absorbing the costs of extraction and refining, which may allow monopolisation of trade in the commodity in future.
On the issue of market access, sources pointed out that even a little opening will be a big plus for Chile because of the sheer size of Indian market compared to the Chilean market.
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A Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) already exists between India and Chile since September 2007, with both sides having agreed to give fixed tariff preferences to each other and three Annexes relating to the Rules of Origin, Preferential Safeguard Measures and Dispute Settlement Procedures.
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