India and United Arab Emirates (UAE) commenced negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on Thursday, setting target of completing it by early December and signing a pact by March 2022, minister of commerce Piyush Goyal said on Friday, September 24.
He said that it will be the first FTA to be conclude by India in over a decade.
The proposed FTA, to be formally called Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) will target to increase bilateral merchandise trade to $100 billion in five years from about $43 billion in 2020-21 and also aim to more than double bilateral services trade to $15 billion during this period.
UAE was India’s second-biggest goods export market until fiscal 2019-20 behind only the US, before China emerged in 2020-21 when the pandemic caused severe disruptions in trade.