The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) is mostly a bilateral agreement that covers a wide range of economic cooperation areas like services, investment, intellectual property rights (IPR), government procurement, disputes, and regulatory aspects of trade.
CEPAs are more comprehensive than other trade agreements, such as the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA).
Free Trade Agreement and CECA
Free Trade Agreement: It is an agreement in which two or more countries agree to provide preferential trade terms, tariff concession etc. to the partner country.
Trade partners maintain negative list of products and services on which the terms of FTA are not applicable.
Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement: CECA generally covers negotiation on trade tariffs and TRQ(Tariff Rate Quotas) rates only. It is not as comprehensive as CEPA.
India has signed CECA with Malaysia.
India – UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement
Salient Features
Trade in Goods: The CEPA provides for preferential market access for over 80% of products traded between India and the UAE.
India will benefit from the reduction or elimination of tariffs on its exports to the UAE, especially in sectors such as gems and jewellery, textiles, leather, footwear, sports goods, plastics, furniture, agricultural and wood products, engineering products, medical devices and automobiles.
Trade in Services: The CEPA covers 11 broad service sectors and more than 100 sub-sectors, such as business services, communication services, construction and related engineering services, distribution services, educational services, environmental services, financial services, health related and social services, tourism and travel related services, recreational cultural and sporting services and transport services.
Both countries have offered enhanced market access for each other’s service providers across these sectors.
Investment: The CEPA provides for a liberal and non-discriminatory regime for crossborder investment between India and the UAE. It also includes provisions on, dispute settlement and cooperation on investment facilitation.
Some Other Areas of Cooperation:
Protection and promotion of investments
Technical barriers to trade (TBT)
Sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures
Dispute settlement
Movement of natural persons
Pharmaceutical products
Intellectual property rights (IPR)
Digital trade
India – UAE Trade
UAE is India’s 3rd largest trading partner (after US, China).
UAE is the 7 th largest investor in India.
Exports: Major Indian exports to UAE are petroleum products, gems and jewellery, machinery and instruments, chemicals, iron and steel, textiles and garments, cereals, meat and meat products, etc.
Imports: Major Indian imports from UAE are crude oil, gold, pearls and precious stones, metal ores and metal scrap, chemicals, electrical machinery, etc.