THE Commerce, Industry and Textiles Minister, Mr Anand Sharma, expressed the hope that the Joint Working Group on Double Taxation Avoidance Convention (DTAC), which is scheduled to meet in February, 2013, would be able to take the deliberations forward to review the bilateral Double Taxation Avoidance Convention with the hope that the two nations will be able to move forward on the issue to prevent misuse of the provisions of the near three-decade old treaty and agree for changes in the treaty so that information regarding source based taxation of capital gains could be shared between the tax authorities. India will also pitch for incorporating benefit limitation clauses in the agreement with a view to prevent ‘treaty abuse'.

Besides a need for deepening and diversifying trade and investment ties between the two countries, he also stressed upon the need for making the Mauritius India Business Council (MIBC) a robust institutional mechanism for giving a boost to trade and investment ties by identifying the priority sectors and sectors of engagement like tourism, infrastructure, manufacturing and light engineering, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, health and life sciences, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and textiles assuring full support for the development of the textiles sector in Mauritius stating that the three draft MOUs in the textiles sector proposed by the Government of Mauritius involving cooperation of the Northern India Textile Research Associaion (NITRA) and the Apparel Promotion Council of India with the Mauritian institutions would be finalized soon.