India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have agreed to increase non-petroleum trade from $48 billion to $100 billion by 2030, union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said on June 19.
Speaking to media after the first joint committee meeting of the India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), the union minister said that the nations have mutually agreed to become more ambitious and move on from their earlier target of an overall $100 billion bilateral trade by 2030 to non-petroleum bilateral trade of $100 billion by 2030, doubling their non-petroleum trade from $48 billion today to $100 billion in the next seven years.
The joint committee, comprising officials from both the countries, aims to review the terms of the trade agreement, which came into force on May 1, 2022.
UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Trade Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi said initial figures suggest that in the first 12 months of the India-UAE CEPA, bilateral non-oil trade rose 5.8 percent from last year. In FY23, UAE was India’s third largest crude oil import partner, with a share of over 10 percent.
Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi pointed out that these figures came amid a sharp decline in global trade in Q3 and Q4 of 2022, proving that the nations have created a real nexus of growth. “Even more impressive are the figures from Q1, 2023. In the first three months of the year, total bilateral trade reached $13.2 billion, up 16.3 percent over the previous quarter,” he added.
