India and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will announce the launch of negotiations for a free trade agreement on Thursday, which is expected promote two-way commerce and investments between the regions, a senior commerce ministry official said.

“GCC officials will be here for the announcement,” the official added.

This would be a kind of resumption of FTA talks as the earlier two rounds of negotiations had been held in 2006 and 2008 between India and the GCC.

The third round did not happen as GCC deferred its negotiations with all countries and economic groups.

GCC is a union of six countries in the Gulf region — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain.

India’s exports to the GCC member countries grew 58.26 per cent to about $44 billion in 2021-22 against $27.8 billion in 2020-21, according to data from the commerce ministry.

The share of GCC members in India’s total imports rose to 18 per cent in 2021-22, from 15.5 per cent in 2020-21. Bilateral trade has increased to $154.73 billion in 2021-22, from $87.4 billion in 2020-21.

EU talks

Officials said the next round of talks on the proposed India-EU FTA will kick off next week focussing on multiple areas such as market access for key industrial and agricultural goods, intellectual property, digital trade, government procurement, data secure status and environment and sustainability issues, including labour and gender.

The third round of negotiations, between November 28 and December 9, will also include separate discussions on an investment protection agreement and geographical indications, they added.

India and the EU re-started negotiations on an FTA in June this year after a gap of nearly nine years. Negotiations, which started in 2007, were suspended in 2013 due to differences over several issues.