India to remove duties on key Omani energy goods under trade pact

New Delhi, Dec 19 (PTI) India will remove import duties on a number of Omani goods, such as crude petroleum oil, urea, liquefied natural gas, vessels, motor gasoline, liquefied propane, iron ore lumps, and naphtha, under the trade agreement signed on December 18.

Duties will also be eliminated on the day of implementation of the comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA) on goods such as lifeboats other than rowing boats, anhydrous ammonia, sulphur, liquefied butanes, toluene, iron ore pellets, and coal tar distillation products.

The CEPA was signed on Wednesday. It is likely to be implemented within the next three months.

According to the pact, duties will be eliminated in a phased manner on certain items such as petroleum bitumen, natural gypsum, aluminium ingots, limestone, automotive diesel fuel, quicklime, dolomite, beauty and skin care preparations, vacuum gas oil, high speed diesel fuel, cement clinkers, unwrought aluminium, base oil, synthetic perfumery compounds, and articles of aluminium.

India is offering tariff liberalisation on 77.79 per cent of its total tariff lines or product categories (12,556), which covers 94.81 per cent of India's imports from Oman by value.

For the products of export interest to Oman and which are sensitive to India, the offer is mostly a tariff-rate quota (TRQ) based liberalisation.

India imported USD 6.6 billion worth of goods from Oman in FY25, dominated by crude oil (USD 1.1 billion), liquefied natural gas (USD 1.1 billion) and fertilisers (USD 1.1 billion).

Other imports included chemical inputs such as methyl alcohol (USD 435 million) and anhydrous ammonia (USD 382.4 million), along with petroleum coke (USD 315 million). PTI RR HVA