Blitz India Business
NEW DELHI: Ten weeks into the India-Oman Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, the number worth putting in front of an exporter is not the tariff cut. It is this: Oman imports about $598 million of textiles and apparel a year, and India supplied $95.1 million of textiles, apparel and handicrafts in FY 2025-26. The agreement’s value is the gap.
The CEPA came into force on 1 June 2026, having been signed on 18 December 2025 by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and Oman’s Minister of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, Qais bin Mohammed Al Yousef. Oman granted immediate duty-free access on all 945 textile and apparel tariff lines, eliminating the standing 5 per cent most-favoured-nation duty, with the same immediate zero-duty treatment for handicraft lines. Across the agreement, 99.38 per cent of India’s exports now enter Oman free of duty. India already accounts for roughly 11 per cent of Oman’s total imports and is its third-largest supplier — so this is not a market being opened from scratch, it is one where an incumbent has just been handed a 5-point price advantage over every competitor still paying MFN.
945 lines, all at zero: Oman removed its 5 per cent MFN duty on every textile and apparel tariff line from day one of the CEPA, and on handicrafts alongside.
A five per cent duty differential does not sound like much until you have quoted against a Bangladeshi supplier on a made-ups order.
At a Glance
• In force since: 1 June 2026; signed 18 December 2025
• Duty-free share of India’s exports: 99.38 per cent
• Textile and apparel tariff lines at zero: all 945; 5 per cent MFN duty removed
• Handicrafts: immediate zero duty
• India’s textiles, apparel and handicraft exports to Oman: $95.1 million, FY 2025-26
• Oman’s annual textile and apparel imports: approximately $598 million
• India’s share of Oman’s total imports: around 11 per cent, third-largest supplier
• Trade facilitation: fully digitalised Certificate of Origin exchange; GI recognition
• Wider frame: India-GCC FTA negotiations launched February 2026; India-UAE CEPA target raised to $200 bn by 2032
Two provisions in the text deserve more attention than they have had. The first is the fully digitalised Certificate of Origin framework, which allows origin certificates to be exchanged electronically between the two customs administrations. For a small exporter, origin documentation is not a formality — it is days of paperwork and a recurring source of consignment delay, and removing it is worth real basis points on working capital. The second is the recognition of Geographical Indications, which matters disproportionately for India’s handloom and handicraft exporters: a GI-tagged product that can be defended in the destination market commands a different price from one that cannot.
The strategic reading is about geography. The release makes the point explicitly: Oman has become a route into the Gulf that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, through ports such as Sohar, and onward into East Africa. In a period when West Asian shipping risk has been priced into freight rather than assumed away, a duty-free agreement with the one GCC economy sitting outside the chokepoint is worth more than its bilateral trade figure suggests. The India-UAE CEPA has already hit its $100 billion target five years early, with a revised goal of $200 billion by 2032, and the India-GCC free trade negotiations launched in February 2026 are intended to replace the current patchwork of bilateral agreements. Oman is the template being tested. The constructive next step is unglamorous and entirely within India’s control: making sure the MSME exporter in Panipat or Karur knows that the 5 per cent is gone, and how to claim it.