Context: Recently, the Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister of India has approved signing of the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement (CECPA) between India and Mauritius.

The salient features of India-Mauritius CECPA

• An institutional mechanism to encourage and improve trade between the two countries.
• A limited agreement which will cover Trade in Goods, Rules of Origin, Trade in Services, Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures, Dispute Settlement, Movement of Natural Persons, Telecom, Financial services, Customs Procedures and Cooperation in other Areas.
• An Automatic Trigger Safeguard Mechanism (ATSM) for a limited number of highly sensitive products within two years of the Signing of the Agreement.

Benefits of the Agreement

• CECPA provides for an institutional mechanism to encourage and improve trade between the two countries.
• It covers more than 310 export items for India.
• Mauritius will benefit from preferential market access into India for its 615 products.
• In services, Indian service providers will have access to around 115 sub-sectors from the 11 broad service sectors such as professional services, computer related services, research & development, other business services, telecommunication, construction, distribution, education, environmental, financial, tourism & travel related, recreational, yoga, audio-visual services, and transport services.

India-Mauritius relations
Background

• India and Mauritius enjoy excellent bilateral relations, sustained by  - historic cultural affinities, frequent high-level political interactions, development cooperation, defence and maritime partnership, and people to people linkages.
• Since 2005, India has been among the largest trading partners of Mauritius, and has been one of the largest exporters of goods and services to Mauritius. 

According to the International Trade Centre (ITC), in 2019

• The main import partners of Mauritius were India (13.85%), China (16.69%), South Africa (8.07%), and UAE (7.28%). 
• The bilateral trade between India and Mauritius has registered a growth of 233% to USD 690.02 million in FY 2019-20. 

Mauritius - an important development partner of India

• India had extended a Special Economic Package of USD 353 million to Mauritius in 2016. 
• The new Supreme Court building project is one of the five projects being implemented under this package and was inaugurated in 2020. 
• In 2019, the Phase-I of the Metro Express Project and the 100-bed state of the art ENT hospital project in Mauritius, also built under the special economic package.
• The India-Mauritius CECPA will further cement the already deep and special relations between the two countries.

Significance of Mauritius to India

Geo-strategic significance

• In 2015, the Indian Prime Minister signed an agreement to set up eight Indian-controlled coastal surveillance radar stations
• Mauritius is part of India’s security grid including Coastal Surveillance Radar (CSR) station of Indian Navy’s National Command Control Communication Intelligence network
• if Delhi takes an integrated view of its security cooperation in the southwestern Indian Ocean, Mauritius is the natural node for it.

Geo-economic significance

• India is Mauritius’s largest trading partner and has been the largest exporter of goods and services to the Indian Ocean island nation since 2007.
• The French description of the island as a “central geographic point” holds equally true for commerce and connectivity in the Indian Ocean.
• As a member of the African Union, Indian Ocean Rim Association and the Indian Ocean Commission, Mauritius is a stepping stone to multiple geographies.
• If Delhi appreciates the value of Mauritius as a regional hub, a number of possibilities present themselves. One, as new investments pour into Africa, Mauritius is where a lot of it gets serviced. Mauritius can be the fulcrum for India’s own African economic outreach.

Mauritius as pivot of Delhi’s island policy

• until now India has tended to deal with the so-called Vanilla islands of the southwestern Indian Ocean — Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte, Reunion and Seychelles — on a bilateral basis.
• If the Indian establishment thinks of them as a collective, it could make Mauritius the pivot of Delhi’s island policy.

Economic opportunities

• the Mauritius pivot can facilitate a number of Indian commercial activities in the southwestern Indian ocean — as a banking gateway, the hub for flights to and from Indian cities and tourism.
• India could also contribute to the evolution of Mauritius as a regional centre for technological innovation.

Common challenges

• climate change, sustainable development and the blue economy are existential challenges for Mauritius and the neighbouring island states.
• Mauritius will be the right partner in promoting Indian initiatives in these areas.
• It could also become a valuable place for regional and international maritime scientific research.