Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: Very good afternoon to all of you. Thank you very much for joining us for this special media briefing on the occasion of the State Visit of the Sultan of Oman. Talks with the Prime Minister have just concluded. To give us a sense of the conversation, we have with us Foreign Secretary Shri Vinay Kwatra. Also joining us on the dais, Secretary (CPV & OIA), Shri Muktesh Pardeshi, Shri Aseem Mahajan, Joint Secretary (Gulf), as well as Shri Amit Narang, our Ambassador to Oman. Sir, may I hand over the floor to you, Sir.
Shri Vinay Kwatra, Foreign Secretary: Thank you very much. Good afternoon to the friends from the media. As Arindam just said, Prime Minister has just concluded his talks with the Head of the State of the Sultanate of Oman, His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik, who is currently on a State visit to India. His Majesty is accompanied on this visit by a very high-level delegation comprising of his Deputy Prime Minister for defense, seven Cabinet Ministers, and three Vice Ministers.
As part of his State visit, His Majesty was accorded a ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhawan earlier this morning, following which the talks which just concluded were held at Hyderabad House between Prime Minister and His Majesty. Talks were both in restricted format and in the delegation-level format, and covered a wide range of areas of our bilateral cooperation, and which also reflected the multifaceted nature of India-Oman bilateral relationship. Later today, in just a little while from now, Honorable Vice President will call on His Majesty, and later in the evening, His Majesty will be hosted by Honorable Rashtrapati ji for a state banquet. This is the first visit of Sultan Haitham to India as the Sultan of Oman.
This is also the first State visit from Oman to India in the last 26 years. Some of you would recall that late His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said had visited India in 1997, and he was also awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize for 2019 posthumously. Most recently, in our exchanges over the last few years, Honorable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji had visited the Sultanate of Oman in February 2018.
The visit by His Majesty is also important, as it follows Oman's very successful participation as a special guest country in the G20 during India's presidency and their participation, particularly at the summit of the G20, in September this year. Oman was one of the nine countries invited by India as special guest, which itself reflects the importance and significance attached by Government of India to this relationship. India shares a special relationship with Oman, anchored in old history of contacts between our people.
Today our relationship has evolved into a strategic partnership, characterized by strong cooperation across a range of areas in diverse fields. India and Oman are partners for maritime security in the Western Indian Ocean. Both sides enjoy robust and multidimensional defense engagement. Oman is also host to large Indian diaspora. About 7 lakh Indians call Oman their home and have in the process made significant and meaningful contribution to the development of the Omani's economy. In terms of our trade and commercial relationship, bilateral trade between India and Oman stood at roughly 12.5 billion in 2022-23, and what is significant is that in the last couple of years it has doubled in quantum. In the discussions between Prime Minister and His Majesty, they were comprehensive and constructive.
They covered, as I said, entire range of our bilateral engagement, including maritime cooperation, trade and investment cooperation, cooperation in new areas, including space, financial technology. They shared concern on the problems of terrorism. They also discussed possible elements of cooperation in the field of energy security, particularly green energy, as of course also the possibilities to further strengthen people-to-people ties, including through the popular of cricket in both the countries. His Majesty congratulated Prime Minister Modi for the success of India's G20 presidency and conveyed his appreciation for the invitation extended to Oman and their participation as the special guest.
The leaders also exchanged perspective on regional and international issues. In terms of significant outcomes from the discussion, first, the two leaders adopted India-Oman Joint Vision, a partnership for future. The Joint Vision basically envisages a path for our bilateral engagement, which is rooted in Oman Vision 2040, which is their national development blueprint under His Majesty Sultan Haitham, and India's development vision under Prime Minister's Amrit Kaal vision.
This vision document focuses building partnership between India-Oman and broadly eight to ten areas, which are, as I also mentioned a while earlier, area of maritime cooperation and connectivity; two, energy security and green energy, in particular green hydrogen; three, space for digital payments, including other ecosystem industries of fintech; the full bucket of health, tourism, and hospitality-related partnership, disaster management featured very prominently in discussions between the Prime Minister and His Majesty, agriculture and food security, and, of course, cricket. Earlier, ahead of the visit, both countries had also signed MoU, including in the field of information technology, cooperation in the field of culture, combating financial crimes, and of course, establishment of a Hindi chair of ICCR in Oman.
Secondly, again an area which featured very prominently in the discussions between the two leaders was ongoing discussions between the two countries for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. Although the negotiations on CEPA have started only recently, they have made substantial progress in the last few rounds of discussion, and both leaders gave strong impetus and push to conclude the CEPA agreement as early as possible. Third, again a significant achievement in terms of India-Oman trade and capital cooperation was the announcement of the third tranche of the Oman-India Joint Investment Fund. This fund would be worth $300 million, approximately 2,500 crores, purely as a point of elaboration. The fund was established as a 50-50 joint venture between the State Bank of India and the Oman Investment Authority, which essentially channelizes investments into the fastest-growing sectors of the Indian economy.
The initial two tranches – the first one was valued at 100 million, the second at roughly 200 million, and the third tranche, which I just mentioned, is 300 million – clearly captures the underlying belief between…in the two countries and the leadership of the two countries of forging a very strong base of economic ties through direct capital investments in the growing sectors of the Indian economy. Fourth, ahead of the visit just a day or two ago, a joint commemorative postage stamp was launched on the sidelines of this visit. The stamp depicts traditional folk dances of both Oman and India.
I have already mentioned to you about the MoUs which have been signed on the sidelines of the visit. Overall, the ongoing visit of His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik is a highly and is ongoing very successful visit, which we are confident will add new dimensions to our strategic partnership between India and Oman. I would end my remarks here, and if there are questions, we'll try and answer them. Thank you.
Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: Thank you, Sir. I'll open the floor for questions. Please introduce yourself and the organization that you represent. I'll start with Siddhant.
Siddhant: Hi, Sir. Siddhant from WION. My first question is how much was there a discussion on the West Asian crisis during the meeting? And second, on the usage of the Duqm port, was there any discussion, are they open to Indian ships using that port?
Nivedita: Nivedita from the Sunday Guardian. Sir, you mentioned something on the financial crimes. Could you please elaborate on that a little?
Huma Siddiqui: I'm Huma Siddiqui from the Financial Express. You talked about the agriculture and food security, if you could share more details. And what about the space cooperation, what kind of cooperation they are looking for?
Sahil: Sir, I'm Sahil from ANI. You spoke about digital payment as well. What kind of collaboration we can expect between the two countries?
Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: I'll take that round of questions.
Shri Vinay Kwatra, Foreign Secretary: Thank you. Siddhant, the given…the ongoing developments in West Asia in terms of what's happening there, in terms of multiple challenges that the ongoing conflict in Gaza has thrown up, that was definitely an important element of discussions between the two leaders, and there was a shared appreciation of the continuing challenge that both countries face from the emerging multiple dimensions of the conflict, including the catastrophic humanitarian situation which is there, the challenge of terrorism, and of course the larger need to find and try and achieve a two-state solution as a way forward, but also the exchange of perspectives of both sides with regard to the situation there. It was discussed and both leaders exchanged in detail their perspective of the situation there.
Look on the Duqm, as I mentioned to you in my opening remarks, you know, our cooperation in the maritime space is quite extensive. I also talked to you about the fact that both leaders identified humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and related to that aspect of disaster management, as an important area of cooperation. Now, one of the key elements in the maritime cooperation always is the question of logistics, and I think Duqm in that sense provides us essentially a logistical base for cooperation between the two countries in the field of maritime cooperation, including humanitarian disaster relief.
On the financial crimes, you know, as I mentioned, this is, you know, one of the MoUs which has been signed with regard to the information exchange on this one. And as you know, what often happens is that between the Financial Intelligence Unit, which on the Indian side is a custodian of such information and exchanges on such information, and on the Omani side, an entity called National Center for Financial Information, which does similar work on their side. An important underlying substance of our cooperation in this field is to prevent money laundering activities that go on and associate a set of crimes, including, you know, money that is laundered going into financing terrorist activities. So when the two systems will sit down to talk about information exchange, the data on crimes of such nature would feature there.
On the space cooperation, look, this has been an area of discussion between India and Oman for quite some time. It has several elements to it. It includes, of course, the services relating to the space-based systems, the data services, the information services that could be exchanged between the two countries. It also talks about building of satellites, the launching of satellites. And it also talks about capacity building, that the two countries can cooperate with regard to building each other's space capability.
Your other query was, I think, on the agriculture and food security. Now, this is, again, you know, something which is already a robust area of engagement between our two countries, and this is something the MoU will take forward some of those discussions which are in the commercial space, marry them into what the two governments can do as enablers so that the commercial partnership in the field of agriculture, agriculture production, and the related elements of food security can expand. Sahil, on the digital part, on the fintech part, there are ongoing discussions between the two countries with regard to utilizing the UPI stack with a potential corresponding digital stack in the Omanese ecosystem. There are also other elements of India stack in terms of the digital infrastructure which is there, which can be suitable to the Omanese priorities with regard to using. Now, financial inclusion, financial technology payment systems, those are only one element of it, but the interface of UPI with the corresponding Oman platform is something we can talk about. Since reference to Digitech and, you know, trade and capital cooperation has come up, I should also highlight that another element of discussion where we would try and move forward would be whether, you know, there is a possibility to look at Rupee trade which can work between the two countries, but this is still at an exploratory stage, but can be an important element of cooperation going forward.
Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: We have some more questions. Okay, Sudhi.
Sudhi Ranjan: Sir, Sudhi Ranjan from Bloomberg, Sir. Any understanding that you can give us on whether India and Oman…a long-term or short-term contract on energy and in particular gas, Sir?
Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: Energy? Yes. There was one more hand. Yeah, Kallol.
Kallol: Kallol from the Hindu. Sir, I would like to know if during the conversation the issue of maritime security in the nearby areas of Oman was raised, especially because the Maersk has announced that it has stopped movement of its container ships through the Red Sea.
Sandhya: Sandhya from ET. I just want to know a bit more on the ICT collaboration. Sir there are any steps to kind of collaborate between the start-ups of the two countries? Thank you.
Huma: Sir, you talked about the CEPA, so I just wanted to know, is this the CEPA or are we also talking about India GCC FTA?
Shri Vinay Kwatra, Foreign Secretary: The last one first, the discussions between the two leaders focused essentially on bilateral comprehensive economic partnership arrangement. On the short-term, long-term contract on energy, as I mentioned in my opening remarks also, in terms of our partnership in energy, we already have a very strong and robust basis of partnership. In today's discussion, besides strengthening that cooperation across the existing field of energy, two elements of strong focus in the discussions were in the field of renewables, including solar, and also green hydrogen. Both countries have this as a shared priority in terms of building their own respective ecosystems, but also to look at cooperation possibilities between those two ecosystems.
On the information technology part, essentially the four or five key elements of the IT MoU essentially include, one, an element of digitization, which I spoke about, two, e-governance, which is spread across both public sector governance, but also in the private bodies, three, the exchange of best practices in the field of information technology, four, are there any basis for us to strengthen and deepen further our exchange of skilled IT professionals between the two countries. Some of this can…well, not mentioned in the MoU, but indirectly lead to the point that you referred to, which is the startup collaboration between the two countries, and of course the overall development of IT industry. The underlying thrust also was to focus on innovation cooperation in the areas, and naturally startup is a key element of that innovation partnership.
Kallol, to your question, you know, as I said earlier on also that the developments in the region in terms of the ongoing conflict, the derivative impact of the ongoing conflict, each of those elements did come up for discussion between the two leaders, and they did share their perspective and shared their concern on the developments and also the challenges that those developments throw up. We are anyway constantly monitoring what's happening to what you alluded to, and…but that's something on which both leaders did spend some time in exchanging views on that.
Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: Thank you very much, Sir. Thank you also to Secretary (CPV) as well as JS (Gulf) and our Ambassador. Thank you for joining us. Please stay tuned for the developing updates on this visit. Thank you.