India Mauritius Comprehensive Economic Cooperation (CECA) Agreement - R R Padmanabhan

 India Mauritius Comprehensive Economic Cooperation (CECA) Agreement - R R Padmanabhan


Courtesy: GOI website
Courtesy: GOI Website

India and Mauritius share a lot in common in terms of social, cultural and economy.  Both of them were colonies of British.  In fact, many indentured laborers from India went Mauritius to work in the sugar fields.  They were mostly from UP, Bihar, W Bengal and Tamil Nadu.  Even though they were far away from mainland India, still these people continue to practice Indian cultural belief system.

The CECA has to be viewed in this background.  The close cultural links now permeates to economic links too.  While India will no doubt be huge market for Mauritius products and services, Mauritius will be a springboard for African and European markets for Indian products and services.

Mauritius

It is one of the most prosperous nations of the African continent behind South Africa and Egypt. The per capita income of Mauritius is US$ is 12740. The official language is English and is religiously diverse with majority being Hindu and Islam.  It is also to note and it is a case study on development economics that till 1961, it was a poor country by economic standards.  But through concerted efforts in diversifying economy in to industrial, financial, ICT and tourist sectors, the country has grown economically.

Improved economy resulted in higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality and quality infrastructure with advances in sugar plantation, tourism, ICT, financial services, seafood processing and exports through its many free trade zones.  Sugar cane is grown in 90% of the land and constitutes 25% of export revenue. 

Once, in one of our international meets in our Shri Ram Chandra Mission, one of our abysses from Mauritius gifted me a beautiful bottle of sugar that was distinctly good both in appearance and in taste.  I did not realize then the significance that sugar plays in their economy. Now I realize that should have accumulated the expertise in sugar production, product variation and packaging.

 

Courtesy: International Sugar Journal

Reasons for Economic Success

The Government invested heavily in human capital formation namely education.  No doubt, quality people gave quality results.  With just 12,71,728 population, the country is able to pull spectacular results in all dimensions of human life.  With digitization and transparent administration, the country ranks 48 out of 168 in Transparency International’s Corruption Per Capital index.

The Present Trade Scenario

Mauritius exports to India the following items and its share in export basket to India is given below:


The Indian Exports are as follows and given in their order of volume and value:




The current CECA take in to consideration the relative strengths of both India and Mauritius and opportunities available resulting out of such strengths. As at this moment, the agreement has been signed and comes in to effect from 1st April 2021, the enabling notification from Ministry of Revenue for concessional duty for Mauritius exports to India has been issued in terms of Notification No. 25/2021 dated 31st March 2021.  Nevertheless, it is interesting to peruse the respective list of products and services covered in the CECA.

India being a big country provides more number of items in favor of Mauritius and in turn gets less number of items covered in its favor.  But it is to be noted that the items covered under the Agreement are not at the moment being traded between both the countries.  Similarly, under services the sectors offered for free access by India are:


Per contra, Mauritius offers the services from India free access in R&D, Travel, tourism, Higher Education, Environmental, Health, Recreational and Transport services.


R R Padmanabhan

Director - Exim Academy


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