Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal. File.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Confirming that India and Oman will be signing a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on Thursday (December 18, 2025), Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said that the FTA offers “immense opportunities” in a number of sectors, including textiles, footwear, automobiles, gems and jewellery, renewable energy, and auto components.
Speaking at the India-Oman Business Forum in Muscat, Mr. Goyal added that India stands to gain in terms of the access Oman provides to other markets such as the GCC region, eastern Europe, central Asia, and Africa.
India and Oman launched negotiations on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) in November 2023. During his speech, Mr. Goyal said he and his counterpart in Oman would sign the Agreement in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sultan Haitham bin Tarik.
The Hindu had on December 17 reported that Mr. Modi and Mr. Goyal would be traveling to Oman this week to sign the FTA.
“This free trade agreement offers immense opportunities in terms of several sectors including textiles, footwear, automobiles, gems and jewellery, renewable energy, and auto components,” Mr. Goyal said. “The sky is the limit in terms of potential, particularly with Oman opening the doors as a gateway to the Gulf Cooperation Council region, eastern Europe, central Asia, and to Africa.”
He added that there are four broad areas in which the two countries can collaborate with each other.
“One is in the energy transition that both are committed to, whether it’s renewable sources of energy, battery storage, green hydrogen, that whole ecosystem can open up between Oman and India and together for the rest of the world,” Mr Goyal said.
The second area, he said, was in infrastructure, multimodal logistics, and export warehouses.
“Another area would be food security,” Mr. Goyal said. “We can help Oman ensure food security, whether we can work together to make this a hub from where we work for the rest of the several reaches that I just described, food parks, there is a lot of potential in this area.”
The fourth area, the Commerce Minister said in which India and Oman could work together was to develop their startup ecosystems.
“The startups can engage with each other, build bridges, work on deep tech or smarter ways to work on logistics software services, artificial intelligence, there is tremendous potential to leverage this area as a hub,” Mr Goyal said.
Published – December 17, 2025 05:10 pm IST
