India, Mauritius sign CECPA

24 Feb '21

2 min read

Anup Wadhawan, Commerce Secretary, India, and Haymandoyal Dillum, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade, Mauritius, signing the India-Mauritius CECPA. Pic: PIB

India and Mauritius recently signed a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement (CECPA) in Port Louis in the presence of Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth and Indian external affairs minister S Jaishankar. This is the first trade agreement signed by India with a country in Africa. It offers an institutional mechanism to improve bilateral trade.

The limited agreement, which will come into force at an early date, will cover trade in goods and services, rules of origin, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, dispute settlement, movement of natural persons, telecom, financial services, customs procedures and cooperation in other areas, according to an official release.

The CECPA covers 310 export items for India, including textile and textile articles (27 lines), food stuff and beverages (80 lines), agricultural products (25 lines), base metals and articles thereof (32 lines), electricals and electronic item (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 apparel, frozen fish, speciality sugar, biscuits, fresh fruits, juices, mineral water, beer, alcoholic drinks, soaps, bags, medical and surgical equipment.

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 & 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, research and development, 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.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)

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