PM Modi lands in Muscat, India-Oman FTA likely tomorrow

On the last leg of his three-nation visit covering Jordan, Ethiopia, and Oman, prime minister Narendra Modi has landed in Muscat, marking 70 years of the establishment of diplomatic ties between India and Oman. The prime minister will hold discussions with Sultan Haitham bin Tarik of Oman, and also address a gathering of Indian diaspora there.

Union minister Piyush Goyal, who is already in Muscat, has reportedly confirmed that India and Oman will sign the comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA) or simply the free trade agreement (FTA) tomorrow in presence of PM Modi and Sultan Haitham bin Tarik.

“This is the first FTA Oman will be doing after nearly 20 years. The last FTA Oman did was with the USA back in 2006,” Piyush Goyal said. The union minister stressed the historical relationship between India and Oman, and said that under India’s G20 leadership, Oman was invited as a guest country (for the first time) to honour the “special relationship” both countries share.

“Oman was invited to the G20 for the first time under India's leadership. It reflects strong relations between both countries. I was taken by surprise when PM Modi told me that he wants Oman to be invited as our guest. Today, I realise how important that decision was,” Piyush Goyal said.

The union minister went on to say that this FTA presents immense opportunities in multiple sectors such as textiles, footwear, automobile, agrochemicals, renewable energy — “sky is the limit!”, he added.

Piyush Goyal also pointed out four prominent areas of collaboration between India and Oman:

• Energy transition including renewable energy, battery storage, green hydrogen & ammonia

• Infrastructure including multi-modal logistics, sports, warehouses

• Food security: We can help Oman ensure food security, we can work together to make this a hub where we work for the rest of the world. Cold storages, food parks etc have a lot of potential

• Start-up ecosystem could engage with each other, to work on deeptech or smarter ways to work on logistics, software and services, AI — tremendous potential to leverage this area as a hub with the amount of investors coming here

The minister also highlighted the alignment between India's vision of Viksit Bharat 2047 and Oman's Vision 2040.

India's Ambassador to Oman, Godavarthi Venkata Srinivas said, "...As to the one which is expected with much anticipation - a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) or as many call, Free Trade Agreement (FTA), between India and Oman, that Agreement also has been under discussion for the past two years. Both sides have gone through a lot of details about the respective areas of interest to each other. We are only hopeful that this Agreement will be concluded at the earliest opportunity."

R Mukundan, MD & CEO of Tata Chemicals Limited and President Designate of CII said, "I think India and Oman have shared a very friendly relationship, a very positive business relationship, a trade which is approximately 10 billion and is growing at 19-20% Y-o-Y. India is the second and third largest partner, in terms of export and import, a very important partner for Oman. But also for India, Oman is a very important partner. Being a staging post for what I would call a South East Asia, South Asia, East Africa corridor, especially with posts like Duqm, Salalah, Sohar, I think it will play a very important role in our international growth as we move toward Viksit Bharat. Oman has been one of those countries which have been extremely friendly in our outreach to the Middle East. Our PM has had a very strong push towards a very positive relationship with the Middle East as well as with South East Asia, the immediate neighbouring space and Oman is a very big part of that."