Rendered from the All Frontier Global FTA registry · researched from official sources, August 2026 · every figure below carries a numbered source
IN FORCE
The India–Oman Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was signed in Muscat on 18 December 2025, ratified by Oman via Royal Decree No. 30/2026 on 15 February 2026, and entered into force on 1 June 2026[15][4]. This corrects a stale spine that had labelled the agreement ‘negotiating, target 2026’ for every chapter.
Finding: Negotiations began in 2023. One source (AGBI) gives the more precise 'November 2023'; three other outlets (indbiz.gov.in — MEA's Economic Diplomacy Division site; Zawya; Muscat Daily), all reporting the same underlying event, give only 'began in 2023' without a month.
Confidence: medium — 'November 2023' is single-sourced; the bare '2023' year is corroborated across three secondary outlets citing one common primary event (a Minister's Rajya Sabha reply, see conclusion below)
Finding: India's Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jitin Prasada informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply that 'India–Oman CEPA negotiations have been concluded.' Muscat Daily and indbiz.gov.in date their reporting of this to 2025-08-10; Drishti IAS separately dates the conclusion itself to 2025-08-14. Neither figure is from a primary document with an explicit 'concluded on [date]' line — both are journalistic dating of the same underlying Parliament reply.
Confidence: medium — the fact of conclusion in early-to-mid August 2025 is solid; the exact day is not reconciled to one date
The netcup skeleton characterized the whole agreement as still 'under negotiation' with a 'conclusion target 2026.' By the time negotiations were reported concluded (Aug 2025), signature (Dec 2025), Omani ratification (Feb 2026) and entry into force (Jun 2026) had all already happened or were on a fast track — the skeleton's own predicted 2026 'conclusion' milestone undersells how far the agreement had actually progressed by this record's 2026-08-20 access date. See status.correction_note.[17][16][14][12][9]
Chapters and Scope
Confirmed Pillars:
Trade in Goods (tariff schedules, Categories A/B/C phase-outs)
Trade in Services, including a Mode 4 (temporary movement of natural persons) framework
Investment — FDI liberalization/facilitation language; formal chapter name and legal character NOT confirmed (see investment.legal_character_unresolved)
Intellectual Property — Geographical Indications recognition for Indian handloom/handicraft products, cooperation 'aligned with WTO TRIPS Agreement'
Rules of Origin (CAROTAR 2020-compliant framework referenced; see roo)
Unlike the EFTA-TEPA pilot record, no source retrieved in this pass gives an official numbered chapter list or total chapter count for India-Oman CEPA (no equivalent of EFTA's 'chapter-by-chapter factsheet' was located). The skeleton's specific chapter framing ('Trade Remedies + ROO Compliance', 'IP + Digital Trade' as named chapters) could not be confirmed or denied at the chapter-title level — treated as a gap, not repeated as fact.[6][10]
Finding: India-Oman CEPA is described repeatedly as Oman's first comprehensive bilateral trade/economic agreement since its FTA with the United States — India is 'only the second nation globally' to have such a pact with Oman. Sources disagree on which date of the Oman-US FTA to cite: some say 'since 2006' (the US-Oman FTA's signing year), one says 'since its 2009 US free trade agreement' (its entry-into-force year). Both years are accurate for that separate, earlier agreement; the discrepancy is a signing-vs-EIF framing difference, not a factual dispute.
Finding: India and Oman already had a Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) and an investment protection agreement dating to 1997, and India secured strategic port/logistics access at Duqm in 2018 — both predate and sit alongside CEPA rather than being part of it.
Confidence: medium — single-sourced to a Canara Bank research note; not cross-checked against a primary treaty text in this pass
Status in detail
IN FORCE
The netcup skeleton spine (accessed as the chapter-spine source for this record) labels the agreement 'negotiating' with a 'conclusion target 2026' and repeats 'target 2026' as the expected milestone for every chapter. That is STALE/INCORRECT as of 2026-08-20: negotiations concluded around 2025-08-10/14, the agreement was SIGNED on 2025-12-18, Oman ratified it via Royal Decree on 2026-02-15, and it ENTERED INTO FORCE on 2026-06-01 — roughly two and a half months before this record was built. This is the single most important correction this record makes.
Finding: One low-authority secondary source (geniuswindow.com) states the signing date as 2025-12-25. This is contradicted by at least nine independent sources — three separate PIB releases, India's own Ministry of Commerce and Industry PDF, Drishti IAS, India Briefing, PWC, Oman Observer, Times of Oman, AGBI, Middle East Briefing, and a Canara Bank research note — all of which agree on 2025-12-18. Treated as a likely error in the outlier source, not a genuine conflict; 2025-12-18 is used throughout this record.
India: Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry
Oman: H.E. Qais bin Mohammed Al Yousef, Minister of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion
Witnessed By: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sultan Haitham bin Tarik, during PM Modi's visit to Muscat
Context: Signed alongside separate MoUs on maritime heritage/museums, scientific research and innovation, skills development, and agriculture (per AGBI). This was India's second FTA signed within roughly six months, after the India-UK FTA.
Process Note: Pre-signing Omani reporting (Oman Observer) described the agreement as needing to 'pass through the State Council and Majlis al Shura before final approval' — i.e., Oman's bicameral Majlis Oman review process. No source in this pass gave a specific Majlis al-Shura or State Council vote date; the Royal Decree is the confirmed ratification instrument and date. Recorded as a gap for the intermediate legislative step, not the final act.
Confidence: high for the Royal Decree number/date (two independent sources); medium/gap for the Majlis review step's own timeline
India Ratification:
Finding: No source in this pass identified a specific Union Cabinet/CCEA approval date prior to signature, nor a specific CBIC (or other) customs notification number/date implementing the agreement's Rules of Origin domestically in India — unlike the India-EFTA TEPA pilot record, where CBIC Notification No. 59/2025-Customs (N.T.) was located. Multiple targeted searches (PIB, commerce.gov.in, CBIC listings, TaxGuru) did not surface this instrument in this pass.
Finding: PIB's entry-into-force release (published 2026-06-01, 3:46 PM IST) states the agreement was operationalized with 'first consignments availing preferential tariff benefits...flagged off' by Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal. The release does not mention any dispute-settlement mechanism, a formally named investment chapter, or a government-procurement chapter — their absence from this flagship release is itself notable (see agreement.chapters_and_scope and unsourced_gaps).
Finding: The WTO Regional Trade Agreements Database's 'recent notifications' listing, as accessed in this pass, shows 'United Kingdom – India' notified 2026-07-15 but does NOT show an India-Oman entry.
Confidence: gap — this is an absence-of-evidence finding from one snapshot view of the database, not a confirmed non-notification; the full RTA database search function was not accessible via the tools used in this pass
Finding: The Department of Commerce's general 'international-trade/trade-agreements' listing page, as fetched in this pass, did not show India-Oman CEPA among concluded agreements or agreements under negotiation.
Confidence: low-value gap — likely reflects this specific page not being the authoritative/updated listing, rather than any doubt about the agreement's in-force status, which is independently confirmed by many other official PIB releases
Finding: India committed to allowing 100% Foreign Direct Investment by Indian companies in major Omani services sectors; Oman made a reciprocal commitment for Indian investors. No aggregate USD investment target (comparable to TEPA's USD 100 billion / 15-year figure) was found for this agreement.
Confidence: high — corroborated across PIB, PWC, and India Briefing
Legal Character Unresolved:
Skeleton Claim: The netcup skeleton describes the Investment chapter as following 'India's 2016 Model BIT framework with national treatment, MFN, FET, expropriation, transfers' and an 'ISDS access pathway under Indian carve-out structure,' with the Oman Investment Authority (OIA) as 'principal counterparty for sovereign-flow investment commitments.'
Verified Finding: NOT independently verified in either direction in this pass. No official PIB release, Omani government source, or legal/trade-press analysis retrieved described the investment provisions' NT/MFN/FET/expropriation/ISDS content, or named the Oman Investment Authority as a CEPA counterparty. The only confirmed investment-related fact is the mutual 100% FDI commitment for services sectors above. Given that the analogous claim for India-EFTA TEPA (a much better-documented case) turned out to be flatly wrong when checked against primary legal analysis, this skeleton claim should NOT be treated as reliable, but it also cannot be affirmatively refuted here — it is recorded as an open question, not a confirmed error.
Confidence: unverified — excluded from confirmed facts
Finding: Indian investments into Oman span iron and steel, fertilizers, clean energy, healthcare, and petrochemicals, totaling approximately RO 286 million (Omani Rial) in Q1 2025.
Confidence: medium — single-sourced (Oman Observer, attributed to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion); no company names (e.g., any specific joint venture) were given in the source, so none are asserted here
Finding: Oman grants duty-free access on 98.08% of its tariff lines, covering 99.38% of India's export value (up from only ~15.33%/15.3% of India's exports entering duty-free previously under MFN terms). India offers tariff liberalization on 77.79% of its 12,556 total tariff lines, covering 94.81% of import value from Oman.
Confidence: very high — this exact figure set recurs identically across at least eight independent fetches: three separate PIB releases, India Briefing, Drishti IAS, PWC, AGBI, and Insights on India
Finding: Oman Observer separately states: 'Oman achieved 97.4% trade liberalization on goods exports; India received 77.8% market access. Oman granted India 99.22% customs liberalization on imports.'
Note: The 77.8% figure is functionally identical to the dominant cluster's 77.79% (rounding). But 97.4% vs. 98.08%, and 99.22% vs. 99.38%, are distinct enough (~0.6-0.7 percentage points) not to be pure rounding, and the sentence structure is ambiguous about which country's offer each percentage describes. Not reconciled to one figure in this pass — recorded as a precision conflict.
97.96% of tariff lines receive immediate (Day-One) duty elimination on the Omani side — a subset of the 98.08% total-coverage figure above, consistent with a small residual share phasing in over time.
Phase Categories:
Category a: Immediate customs duty exemption at entry into force
Category B: Gradual reduction over 5 years — zero tariffs by 2030-06-01
Category C: Gradual reduction over 10 years — zero tariffs by 2035-06-01
Category Source: Times of Oman, citing Oman News Agency reporting
India's tariff elimination on Omani goods is phased over up to 10 years depending on product classification (PWC); India's own retained (non-zero) duty bands for sensitive categories include 4%, 4.5%, 9%, 24%, and 27% (India Briefing, single-sourced).
high for the Category A/B/C structure and dates (Times of Oman, corroborated in spirit by the 97.96%-immediate figure); medium for India's specific retained-duty-band percentages (single-sourced)[15][11][10]
Finding: India keeps a protection/exclusion list covering (combined across two sources): dairy, cereals, spices, coffee, tea, animal-origin products, rubber, leather, textiles, footwear, petroleum oils, minerals, edible oils, oilseeds, tobacco, precious metals, and sports goods.
Directionality Warning: This is what INDIA excludes from ITS OWN tariff concessions TO OMAN (protecting Indian producers from Omani imports in these categories). It is the OPPOSITE direction from goods.sector_detail.textiles_and_apparel below, where OMAN grants zero duty to INDIAN textile exports. The word 'textiles' legitimately appears on both sides of the ledger, in opposite trade directions — flagged explicitly to prevent misreading this as a contradiction.
Finding: 945 Omani tariff lines covering textiles, apparel, and handicrafts get immediate duty-free access, eliminating a prevailing ~5% MFN duty; handloom products also receive Geographical Indications recognition. Oman's total annual textile/apparel import market is ~USD 597.9-598 million; India's exports into that market are USD 131.8 million, giving India a 22% market share — up from 9.3% in 2023 (internally consistent: 131.8/597.9 ≈ 22.0%, matching the stated share almost exactly, which corroborates both figures).
Confidence: high for the USD 131.8M/22%-share figures (identical in two independent fetches of the same underlying PIB sectoral note, and internally consistent by simple division); medium for the '945 tariff lines' figure (single-sourced to the EIF-day PIB release; its exact category overlap with the 131.8M/22% figures — e.g., whether handicrafts are counted in one but not the other — is not confirmed)
Excluded Figure: A separate fetch of the same EIF-day PIB release also yielded 'India's FY2025-26 exports to Oman: USD 95.1 million' and '~11% market share' for this sector. These numbers do not reconcile arithmetically with any other figure found (95.1/598 ≈ 15.9%, not 11%) and are not repeated by any other source — treated as an unreliable extraction and excluded from this record rather than presented as fact.
Finding: Zero-duty access for finished medicines, vaccines, immunological products, antibiotic APIs (penicillins, streptomycins, tetracyclines), anti-cancer medicines, cardiovascular medicines, gastrointestinal drugs, and anti-infectives. Oman's pharma market is valued at ~USD 302.84 million (2024), projected to reach USD 473.71 million by 2031 (6.6% CAGR). Products already approved by stringent regulators (USFDA, EMA, UK MHRA, TGA) get fast-tracked Omani marketing authorization within a 90-day target, without duplicative inspection.
Confidence: high — consistent across two independent fetches of the same PIB sectoral note
Finding: Previous MFN tariffs 0-5%; India's engineering-goods exports to Oman were USD 875.83 million in FY2024-25, projected to reach USD 1.3-1.6 billion by 2030.
Finding: Previous duties 0-5%. Oman's total marine-product import market was USD 118.91 million (2022-24 basis); India's current exports into it are USD 7.75 million. Marine products also get the 90-day fast-track marketing-authorization treatment for USFDA/EMA-approved products.
Agriculture and Processed Foods
Oman's total agricultural import market was USD 5.97 billion in 2024 (up from USD 4.51 billion in 2020; 7.29% CAGR). India holds a 10.24% share, making it the second-largest supplier; India's agricultural exports to Oman were USD 556.34 million in 2024 (up from USD 364.67 million in 2020), of which APEDA-scheduled products were USD 477.33 million.[6]
Product Specifics:
Boneless Bovine Meat: India holds 94.3% share of Oman's USD 68.27 million import market.
Fresh Eggs: India holds 98.3% share; Oman is India's largest export destination for eggs.
Finding: Oman's annual gems and jewellery import market is ~USD 1.07 billion; India's exports into it were USD 35 million in 2024 (one lower-confidence figure elsewhere cites India's historical share at only USD 25.78 million), with growth projected up to USD 150 million over three years. Previous duties were up to 5%. A separate, unrelated PIB context figure states India targets USD 100 billion in GLOBAL gems and jewellery exports by 2040 (Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal) — not Oman-specific, included only as context, not conflated with the Oman figures.
Finding: Oman's chemicals import market was USD 3.13 billion in 2024; India's exports into it were USD 169.41 million (previous tariff 5%). India's GLOBAL chemical exports were USD 40.48 billion (context figure, not Oman-specific).
Directionality Warning: This is INDIA'S chemical EXPORTS TO Oman (finished/specialty chemicals). It is the OPPOSITE direction from petrochemicals_and_urea_omani_side below (Oman's petrochemical feedstock exports TO India). Both are legitimately labeled 'chemicals'/'petrochemicals' but describe different product mixes flowing in opposite directions — flagged to prevent conflation, in the same spirit as the TEPA pilot's chemicals-directionality note.
Finding: Oman's plastics import market was USD 1.06 billion in 2024; India's exports into it were USD 89.39 million (previous duty 5%).
Petrochemicals and Urea Omani Side
This is the Omani 'ask' side of the ledger — Oman's exports TO India. Petroleum products and urea historically make up 'over 70%' of Oman's exports to India (corroborated by two independent sources: PWC and Zawya). Non-oil exports named include polyethylene, urea, gypsum, ethylene, and petrochemical/metals products.
Note: The following are from one secondary source (ruralvoice.in) and contain an internal inconsistency the source itself does not reconcile (a full-fiscal-year urea figure alongside a narrower April-2025-to-April-2026 fertilizer comparison that doesn't cleanly nest inside it) — presented with that caveat rather than smoothed over.
Crude Oil Imports: USD 1.6 billion (fiscal 2026)
Lng Imports: USD 1.2 billion (fiscal 2026)
Urea Fertilizer Imports: USD 843 million (fiscal 2026)
Methanol Imports: USD 465 million (fiscal 2026)
Ammonia Imports: USD 424 million (fiscal 2026)
Fertilizer Surge Claim: Fertilizer imports from Oman reportedly surged 246.4% between April 2025 and April 2026, from USD 430 million to nearly USD 1.5 billion — attributed partly to supply disruptions/shortages from other Gulf states. This figure's exact period basis (single month vs. cumulative) is unclear from the source.
Note: A different, independently-sourced breakdown (Canara Bank; year basis not fully specified — see trade.series for the ambiguity), India's top-5 imports FROM Oman by product: petroleum/crude oil USD 2,940.06 million; 'Others' USD 1,116.01 million; Fertilizers USD 1,069.35 million; Organic chemicals USD 608.74 million; Inorganic chemicals USD 407.75 million. Reciprocally, Oman's top-5 imports FROM India: petroleum products USD 1,571.72 million; 'Others' USD 1,519.51 million; inorganic chemicals USD 379.91 million; industrial machinery USD 231.81 million; grains USD 188.66 million — notable that refined petroleum products flow BOTH ways between the two countries.
high for the qualitative '>70% petroleum + urea' framing (two independent official/near-official-adjacent sources); medium for the specific dollar figures (mostly single-sourced per series, with an internal inconsistency flagged above)
Finding: Described as the first-ever comprehensive Traditional Medicine commitment made by any country, across all supply modes.
Confidence: medium — repeated across PIB-derived sources but not independently verified against a comparator database of other countries' FTA services schedules
Contractual Service Suppliers: Stay extended from 90 days to up to 2 years, renewable for a further 2 years (per Canara Bank's more detailed framing; other sources give the plainer '90 days to 2 years').
Intra Corporate Transferees: Quota ceiling raised from 20% to 50% of a company's workforce; stay duration up to 4 years.
Confidence: high for the ICT 20%→50% ceiling and CSS 90-day→2-year extension (corroborated 5+ times); medium for the specific Business Visitor/Independent Professional durations (traced to one detailed source, a2ztaxcorp, though structurally consistent with standard Indian FTA Mode-4 templates)
100% FDI permitted for Indian companies in major Omani services sectors; Oman's investors get a broadly reciprocal commitment in India.[2][19][6][22]
Finding: Oman recognizes/accepts: GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) certificates from India; India's Export Inspection Council (EIC) inspection outcomes; halal certification (mutual recognition); India's National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP) organic certification.
Trade Figures
CY2024:
Total: USD 863 million
India Exports: USD 665 million
India Imports: USD 198 million (also cited as USD 197.7 million)
India Surplus: USD 447 million
CY2023:
India Exports: USD 617 million (up from USD 397 million in 2020)
India Imports: USD 159 million (up from USD 101 million in 2020)
2024 and 2023 figures both come from the same general trend and are not contradictory — presented as two points on one growth trajectory, on a calendar-year basis distinct from the goods trade FY-basis series in trade.series.
USD 12.52 billion; India's share ~5.31% (Middle East Briefing) / 'approximately 5%' (Canara Bank) — consistent, minor rounding only.[8][10][22]
Rules of origin
Products qualify as originating if 'wholly obtained' in a Party, or made from non-originating materials that have undergone 'sufficient working or processing' under Product-Specific Rules (tariff-classification-change and/or value-added tests) — the same general two-track structure as the EFTA-TEPA pilot record, per PWC's description of the Omani side.
India-side importers must comply with the Customs (Administration of Rules of Origin under Trade Agreements) Rules, 2020 ('CAROTAR'), per India Briefing — this is India's standing cross-FTA RoO administration framework, not an Oman-CEPA-specific instrument.
Specific Thresholds:
Finding: No source retrieved in this pass gave a specific Regional Value Content (RVC) percentage or Change-in-Tariff-Heading (CTH/CTSH) tier definition for this agreement, despite the netcup skeleton's specific claim of 'CTH + 35-40% RVC' dual qualification.
Confidence: unverified — the skeleton's specific 35-40% figure is NEITHER confirmed NOR refuted; excluded from confirmed facts
Note: see unsourced_gaps
Not found — no source specified a certificate-of-origin validity period (contrast with TEPA's confirmed 12-month figure) or whether a digital/paperless Certificate of Origin framework (claimed by one EIF-day PIB release in passing) is fully operational.[11][10]
India Implementing Instrument:
Finding: Not found — despite multiple targeted attempts (PIB, TaxGuru, CBIC notification listings), no specific CBIC customs notification number/date implementing this agreement's Rules of Origin in India was located in this pass.
Confidence: gap, not a finding
Trade flows
Three non-reconcilable trade-value series were found; per the provenance rule they are recorded separately below and NOT averaged or blended. They differ in basis (Indian fiscal year vs. Canara Bank's ambiguously-labeled calendar-year-ish series vs. undated EFTA-style 'current bilateral trade' rounding) and possibly in scope.
India-Oman total bilateral (goods) trade, Indian fiscal-year basis — PRIMARY headline series — Press Information Bureau, Government of India (citing Department of Commerce/DGCI&S-type trade data), corroborated by India Briefing[2][10][6]
USD 11.18 billion, up 5.41% year-on-year (India's exports USD 4.02 billion; India's imports USD 7.17 billion — sums consistent with the total to within normal rounding)
Apr Oct 2025 Partial Year Context
USD 6.48 billion (a 7-month figure cited in the Jan-2026 PIB note, before FY2025-26 closed; superseded by the full-year FY2025-26 figure above)
Basis: Indian fiscal year (April-March), USD, goods only · accessed 2026-08-20
FY2025-26 (ending 2026-03-31) is the latest COMPLETE fiscal year as of this record's 2026-08-20 access date, and is used as the headline 'latest same-series full-year' trade figure for this record: USD 11.18 billion.
Canara Bank historical annual trade series (year basis ambiguous) — Canara Bank research note[22]
Basis: Labeled by calendar year 2018-2025; magnitudes for '2025' are close to, but not identical to, the FY2024-25 figures in the primary series above, suggesting (but not confirming) that Canara's year labels may actually be Indian-FY-ending-year labels rather than true calendar years · accessed 2026-08-20
Kept fully separate from the primary FY series above per the provenance rule, even though the '2025' row is suggestively close to FY2024-25's USD 6.55B/4.06B split — that closeness is noted, not assumed to be identity.
Rounded 'current bilateral trade' figure used in general PIB/press messaging — Various PIB releases and secondary press[4]
Measure
Value
Current Bilateral Trade
over USD 10 billion / USD 10+ billion
Basis: Undated, rounded · accessed 2026-08-20
A loose rounding consistent with, but not a substitute for, the precise FY series above.
Milestones
2023 (November 2023 per one single-sourced outlet)
India-Oman CEPA negotiations begin.
Confidence: medium
2023-2025
Five negotiating rounds conducted (per Oman's Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, as reported by Oman Observer).
Confidence: medium — single-sourced round count
~2025-08-10/14
Negotiations concluded — announced via India's Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jitin Prasada's written reply to the Rajya Sabha; exact date not reconciled across sources.
Confidence: medium
2025-12-18
CEPA signed in Muscat by Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Oman's Minister of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion Qais bin Mohammed Al Yousef, witnessed by PM Modi and Sultan Haitham bin Tarik. Companion MoUs signed on maritime heritage/museums, scientific research/innovation, skills development, and agriculture.
Confidence: high
2026-01-10
PIB publishes a detailed sectoral explainer, 'India-Oman CEPA: What the New Trade Deal Means for Exports, Services and Jobs,' ahead of entry into force.
Confidence: high
2026-02-15
Oman ratifies CEPA via Royal Decree No. 30/2026.
Confidence: high
2026-06-01
CEPA enters into force for India and Oman; operationalized with first preferential-tariff consignments flagged off by Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal. PIB publishes multiple entry-into-force releases the same day (3:46 PM IST).
Confidence: high
2026-08-20 (this record's access date)
No specific post-entry-into-force implementation friction, dispute, or follow-up milestone (comparable to the TEPA record's Switzerland-visit friction note) was identified in this research pass. Recorded as an absence-of-evidence finding, not a confirmed absence of issues — the agreement is only ~2.5 months into force as of this date.
Confidence: gap, not a finding
Sources disagree
Recorded exactly as the registry states each disagreement — the conflicting values, the organisations behind them, and how this record handles it.
Sources disagree
Status Stale Skeleton
The netcup skeleton (spine source) describes the agreement as 'negotiating' throughout, with every chapter's 'next milestone' listed as 'conclusion target 2026.' Verified reality: negotiations concluded around August 2025, the agreement was SIGNED 2025-12-18, ratified by Oman 2026-02-15, and ENTERED INTO FORCE 2026-06-01. The skeleton is stale by the full lifecycle of the agreement, not just a status label.
How this record handles it: Use entered_into_force_date = 2026-06-01 (multiply corroborated by PIB, India-briefing, PWC, Times of Oman, Oman Observer, and others).
Sources disagree
Investment Chapter Legal Character Unresolved
Skeleton claims the Investment chapter follows India's 2016 Model BIT with NT/MFN/FET/expropriation/ISDS provisions, with the Oman Investment Authority as principal counterparty. No source retrieved in this pass confirmed OR refuted this. The only confirmed investment fact is the mutual 100% FDI commitment in major services sectors.
How this record handles it: Not resolved. Recorded as an open question in investment.legal_character_unresolved rather than repeating the skeleton's specific claim as fact or asserting it is wrong (contrast with the TEPA pilot, where the equivalent skeleton claim WAS independently verified as false — here it simply could not be checked).
Sources disagree
Tariff Coverage Precision Conflict
The dominant, heavily-corroborated cluster states Oman's coverage as 98.08% of tariff lines / 99.38% of India's export value, and India's offer as 77.79% of tariff lines / 94.81% of import value. A single Oman Observer article gives 97.4% / 99.22% / 77.8% instead, with ambiguous sentence structure about which side each number describes.
How this record handles it: Dominant cluster used as the headline figures throughout this record (goods.headline_coverage.dominant_cluster); Oman Observer's numbers retained separately, not blended or treated as more authoritative despite being an Omani source, because of the ambiguous phrasing and lack of corroboration.
Sources disagree
Negotiation Conclusion Date Imprecision
Muscat Daily/indbiz.gov.in report the 'concluded' announcement around 2025-08-10; Drishti IAS dates the conclusion itself to 2025-08-14.
How this record handles it: Both retained in agreement.negotiation_history.conclusion; not forced to one date.
Sources disagree
Signing Date Outlier
geniuswindow.com states the signing date as 2025-12-25, versus 2025-12-18 corroborated by nine-plus independent sources including India's own Ministry of Commerce and Industry PDF.
How this record handles it: 2025-12-18 used throughout; the outlier is noted in status.signed_date_outlier but treated as a likely error, not a genuine competing fact.
Sources disagree
Oman Us FTA Reference Year
Sources variously describe this CEPA as Oman's first comprehensive bilateral trade agreement 'since 2006' or 'since its 2009 US free trade agreement.'
How this record handles it: Both years are accurate for the separate, earlier Oman-US FTA (2006 signing vs. 2009 entry into force); recorded as a framing difference, not a factual dispute, in agreement.historical_context.oman_us_fta_reference.
Sources disagree
Trade and Sector Directionality
'Textiles' appears both as an item on India's OWN protection/exclusion list (goods it does not liberalize FROM Oman) and as a major Omani concession TO India (945 tariff lines, duty-free). Similarly, 'chemicals'/'petrochemicals' appears as a modest Indian export TO Oman (~USD 169M, finished/specialty chemicals) and as a much larger Omani export TO India (urea, methanol, ammonia, organic/inorganic chemical feedstocks, well over USD 1 billion). Both pairs risk being misread as contradictions if trade direction is not kept explicit.
How this record handles it: Explicit directionality warnings added inline in goods.india_exclusions_and_sensitive_bands and goods.sector_detail.chemicals_india_export_side.
Sources disagree
Trade Figure Three Series
Three trade-value series exist (PIB/India-Briefing FY-basis series; Canara Bank's ambiguously-labeled annual series; and rounded 'over USD 10 billion' press language). They differ in basis and are not fully reconcilable.
How this record handles it: All three retained separately in trade.series, each labeled with org/basis/accessed date; FY2025-26 (USD 11.18 billion) used as the headline 'latest full-year' figure.
Not yet verifiable
What the registry could not source, listed exactly as it states it — not gaps filled from memory or inference.
India's Union Cabinet/CCEA approval date prior to the 2025-12-18 signing — not located.
India's domestic implementing instrument (equivalent to the TEPA pilot's CBIC Notification No. 59/2025-Customs (N.T.)) — no specific CBIC notification number or date implementing Oman-CEPA Rules of Origin was found, despite multiple targeted attempts.
Oman's Majlis al-Shura / State Council specific review and vote dates — only the resulting Royal Decree No. 30/2026 (2026-02-15) was confirmed; the intermediate legislative timeline was not.
Specific Regional Value Content (RVC) percentage and CTH/CTSH tier definitions for Rules of Origin — the skeleton's claimed '35-40% RVC' figure was neither confirmed nor refuted.
Certificate-of-origin validity period — not found (contrast with TEPA's confirmed 12-month figure).
Investment chapter's formal name and legal character (presence or absence of ISDS, national treatment, MFN, FET, expropriation provisions) — not found in any source retrieved; the skeleton's 'Investment Protection'/2016-Model-BIT framing is neither confirmed nor debunked.
Formal chapter-by-chapter list and total chapter count for the agreement — no EFTA-factsheet-equivalent document was located.
Dispute settlement mechanism — not mentioned in any PIB release retrieved, including the flagship entry-into-force release.
Government procurement chapter — not confirmed to exist or have any specific content.
Digital trade chapter specifics (cross-border data flows, paperless trade, DPDP Act integration as claimed by the skeleton) — only GI recognition and general TRIPS-alignment were confirmed; broader digital-trade claims are unverified.
Formal WTO RTA notification date for India-Oman CEPA — absent from one snapshot of the WTO RTA database's 'recent notifications' listing (which did show 'UK-India' notified 2026-07-15); full database search was not accessible in this pass.
Exact number of negotiating rounds (five, per Oman Observer) — single-sourced, no Indian-side corroboration found.
Any specific named joint venture or flagship investment project (e.g., a fertilizer/petrochemical joint venture) tied explicitly to this CEPA — none was named in any source retrieved; none is asserted in this record.
Post-entry-into-force implementation friction, disputes, or follow-up events (the equivalent of the TEPA record's May-2026 Switzerland-visit friction note) — none found in this pass; the agreement is relatively new (in force since 2026-06-01).