India wants to seal a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Gulf nations, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said on Monday as he invited the oil producers to invest in Asia's fourth-largest economy.
India was negotiating a FTA with the six-member Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), and officials would meet again next month, the minister said, but he declined to give an indication of when he expected a deal to be reached.
While the GCC - Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman - is India's third-largest trading partner, the members are not large investors in the country. "Oil-producing countries have large reserves. I believe India can be an attractive destination for investing these reserves," Chidambaram told a Indo-Arab conference.
India has signed bilateral investment protection agreements with countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. "We are negotiating similar agreements with four more countries," the minister said.
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