India and GCC resume free trade agreement talks

NEW DELHI: India and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have agreed to resume talks on a free trade agreement, India’s trade minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.

These talks mark the third such attempt to ink a trade pact between the two regions, with negotiations previously held in 2006 and 2008.

Mutually agreed areas of focus in the talks would be food security, energy security and technology transfer, among others, said GCC Secretary General Nayef Falah M. Al-Hajraf.

The GCC is a union of six countries in the Gulf region including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain.

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