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India, Mauritius to sign comprehensive trade pact
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SME Times News Bureau | 17 Feb, 2021
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the signing of the Comprehensive
Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement (CECPA) between India
and Mauritius providing an institutional mechanism to encourage and
improve trade between the two countries.
The India-Mauritius
CECPA will be the first trade agreement to be signed by India with a
country in Africa. The pact is a limited agreement which will cover
Trade in Goods, Rules of Origin, Trade in Services, Technical Barriers
to Trade (TBT), Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures, Dispute
Settlement, Movement of Natural Persons, Telecom, Financial services,
Customs Procedures and cooperation in other areas.
The CECPA
between India and Mauritius covers 310 export items for India, including
food stuff and beverages (80 lines), agricultural products (25 lines),
textile and textile articles (27 lines), base metals and articles
thereof (32 lines), electricals and electronic items (13 lines),
plastics and chemicals (20 lines), wood and articles thereof (15 lines),
and others.
Mauritius will benefit from preferential market
access into India for its 615 products, including frozen fish,
speciality sugar, biscuits, fresh fruits, juices, mineral water, beer,
alcoholic drinks, soaps, bags, medical and surgical equipment, and
apparel.
As regards trade in services, Indian service providers
will have access to around 115 sub-sectors from the 11 broad service
sectors such as professional services, computer-related services,
research & development, other business services, telecommunication,
construction, distribution, education, environmental, financial, tourism
and travel-related, recreational, yoga, audio-visual services, and
transport services.
India has offered around 95 sub-sectors from
the 11 broad services sectors, including professional services, R&D,
other business services, telecommunication, financial, distribution,
higher education, environmental, health, tourism and travel-related
services, recreational services and transport services.
Both
sides have also agreed to negotiate an Automatic Trigger Safeguard
Mechanism (ATSM) for a limited number of highly sensitive products
within two years of the signing of the agreement.
The agreement
will be signed by both countries on a mutually convenient date and will
come into force from the first day of the following month.
India
and Mauritius enjoy excellent bilateral relations, sustained by historic
cultural affinities, frequent high-level political interactions,
development cooperation, defence and maritime partnership, and
people-to-people linkages.
Mauritius is an important development
partner of India. India had extended a 'Special Economic Package' of
$353 million to Mauritius in 2016. The new Supreme Court building
project is one of the five projects being implemented under this package
and was jointly inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime
Minister of Mauritius Pravind Jugnauth in July 2020.
In October
2019, Prime Minister Modi and his Mauritius counterpart had jointly
inaugurated phase-I of the Metro Express Project and a 100-bed
state-of-the-art ENT hospital project in Mauritius, also built under the
special economic package.
Since 2005, India has been among the
largest trading partners of Mauritius, and has been one of the largest
exporters of goods and services to Mauritius. According to the
International Trade Centre (ITC), in 2019, the main import partners of
Mauritius were India (13.85 per cent), China (16.69 per cent), South
Africa (8.07 per cent), and UAE (7.28 per cent).
Bilateral trade
between India and Mauritius has registered a growth of 233 per cent from
$206.76 million in Financial Year (FY) 2005-06 to USD 690.02 million in
FY 2019-20. India's exports to Mauritius surged 232 per cent from
$199.43 million in FY 2005-06 to $662.13 million in FY 2019-20, while
India's imports from Mauritius increased 280 per cent from $7.33 million
in 2005-06 to $27.89 million in FY 2019-20.
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Customs Exchange Rates |
Currency |
Import |
Export |
US Dollar
|
66.20
|
64.50 |
UK Pound
|
87.50
|
84.65 |
Euro
|
78.25
|
75.65 |
Japanese
Yen |
58.85 |
56.85 |
As on 13 Aug, 2022 |
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