India planning to seek easier entry for dentists, nurses, CAs into the UAE

India will seek easier entry for dentists, nurses, company secretaries into the UAE as it explores mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) with the latter as part of CEPA

India is planning to seek easier entry for dentists, nurses, company secretaries, and chartered accountants (CAs) into the UAE as it explores mutual recognition agreements (MRA) with the latter as part of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which was signed between the two nations in February 2022.

The India-UAE CEPA has provisions for mutual recognition of professional and skill-based qualifications to facilitate workers to deliver services across the two countries.

The MRAs will be discussed by the sub-committee on services set up this week.

“We will explore MRAs in certain areas of interest. The composition of the committee is yet to be decided,” said an official with knowledge about the development, according to a report in The Economic Times (ET).

The official said that India has MRAs with Singapore and other countries and can replicate them with the UAE.

The MRAs are crucial as nearly 35 per cent of the UAE residents are Indian expatriates, the official added.

In the first one year of the CEPA, India-UAE bilateral non-oil trade reached $50.5 billion, up by 5.8 per cent. In the first three months of the year, bilateral trade reached $13.2 billion, 16.3 per cent higher than the previous quarter, according to the ET report.