India, UAE target $100 bn non-oil trade by 2030

New Delhi India and the UAE look to more than double non-oil bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2030, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Monday. At present, the non-oil bilateral trade stands at $48 billion. The new target was agreed upon during the first meeting of the Joint Committee of India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). The agreement was implemented on May 1 last year.

"We have mutually agreed that let us now become more ambitious and instead of our earlier target of an overall $100 billion bilateral trade by 2030 ... we shall now look at non-petroleum bilateral trade of $100 billion by 2030, which means doubling our non-petroleum trade from $48 billion today to $100 billion in the next seven years," Goyal told reporters after the meeting.

The UAE is a major supplier of crude oil to India. Oil shipments account for a major share of bilateral trade between the countries. He said that businesses from both sides were encouraged to further expand this trade and smooth implementation of the CEPA will help in this. In the meeting, it was also agreed to set up various committees and sub-committees and technical councils with regard to the implementation of various provisions of the trade agreement such as trade in goods; customs facilitation; rules of origin; sanitary and phyto-sanitary and technical barriers to trade issues; trade remedies; investment facilitation; and economic cooperation.

A new sub-committee for handling matters related to trade in services would be set up and it was decided to exchange services trade data - both preferential and on MFN (most favoured nation) - on a quarterly basis.