Articles
Mobility in Trade Agreements: India’s Mode 4 Strategy in a Services-Driven Economy
As the global economy shifts toward services and knowledge-intensive industries, the terms of trade are changing. Market access is no longer based solely on tariffs and customs procedures; increasingly, it depends on whether skilled professionals can cross borders to deliver services in person. This shift has given rise to what trade negotiators call Mode 4, the temporary movement of individuals across borders to provide a service, often described as the “presence of natural persons.”
Unlike goods, many high-value services cannot be delivered remotely. Software implementation, infrastructure engineering, and financial consulting all require physical presence at the client’s location. Mobility provisions in trade agreements formalise this reality, reducing visa uncertainty and qualification recognition barriers that have historically constrained international services trade.
Mobility as a Structural Component of India’s Trade Strategy
India has strategically embraced this shift, especially with services contributing more than 50% of GDP and a substantial share of export earnings; the country’s economic competitiveness is directly tied to its ability to deploy professionals in international markets (World Bank 2024). Mobility provisions have therefore become an important instrument of India’s commercial diplomacy, not as immigration concessions but as mechanisms enabling firms to internationalise their operations, win contracts abroad, and deliver on them.
Under the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services, Mode 4 covers four categories of service providers: business visitors, intra-corporate transferees, contractual service suppliers, and independent professionals (WTO 2023). It holds particular strategic importance for India, whose export model depends heavily on deploying engineers, IT specialists, and consultants at client sites abroad. India’s recent FTAs reveal a consistent pattern: Mode 4 commitments are embedded alongside tariff reductions and services liberalisation rather than treated as peripheral addenda. Many high-value services, from software implementation to infrastructure engineering, cannot be delivered remotely, making physical presence commercially necessary. Mobility provisions formalise this form of market access, reducing the visa uncertainty and qualification recognition barriers.
India-UAE CEPA: Establishing the Framework for Mobility
The India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, signed in February 2022, represents the first major agreement in India’s new generation of FTAs. It spans 11 services sectors and more than 100 subsectors (Government of India 2022; Deloitte 2022). Bilateral trade grew from $72.9 billion in FY2022 to over $100 billion by FY2025 (Reuters 2025). The UAE chapter adopted a relatively liberal approach to business visitor categories, offering Indian IT and consulting firms accessible pathways for short-term deployments. This design choice, prioritising practical usability over formal comprehensiveness, has since shaped how India approaches mobility chapters in subsequent negotiations.
India-Australia ECTA: Institutionalising Professional Mobility
The India-Australia ECTA advanced the mobility agenda by embedding it within a framework of institutional cooperation. Beyond visa pathways, it pairs temporary movement provisions with mutual recognition frameworks for professional qualifications (DFAT 2023). Qualification recognition barriers are among the most persistent structural obstacles to Mode 4 trade. By enabling regulatory bodies to streamline licensing procedures, the ECTA treats labour mobility as regulatory cooperation rather than immigration management, a reframing with lasting policy implications: it broadens the domestic coalitions that benefit from liberalisation and makes commitments harder to reverse.
India-EFTA and Subsequent Agreements: Deepening the Framework for Mobility
India’s agreement with the European Free Trade Association introduces a further dimension: the explicit linkage between investment flows and professional mobility. Since foreign direct investment and professional deployment are often two sides of the same transaction, the EFTA deal creates a more coherent framework than earlier agreements that kept them in separate silos. Given Switzerland and Norway’s significant mutual interests with India in pharmaceuticals and financial services, these provisions carry practical commercial weight beyond their formal scope.
Subsequent agreements reinforce the pattern, each reflecting the character of the bilateral relationship. The India-UK Free Trade Agreement centres services and mobility as core elements, consistent with the significant role Indian professionals already play in the UK’s technology and consulting sectors. The India-Oman CEPA, which includes tariff concessions on more than 98% of Indian exports, formalises mobility pathways that have historically operated through informal bilateral labour arrangements, providing greater legal certainty for workers and firms (Times of India 2025). The India-New Zealand FTA, concluded in December 2025, places significant emphasis on services, education, and labour mobility, including provisions for student mobility and skilled worker visas, indicating that mobility is becoming a structural component of India’s forthcoming trade agreements (Economic Times 2025).
India-EU FTA: The Limits of Liberalisation
The India-EU Free Trade Agreement showcases the political constraints that continue to shape Mode 4 mobility provisions in trade agreements. During negotiations, India sought expanded access for skilled professionals in IT, engineering, and consulting, while the European Union prioritised regulatory standards, qualification recognition and labour market safeguards. The final agreement reflects a structural tension that runs through all mobility provisions: the economic case for liberalisation is widely accepted, but it intersects directly with domestic immigration politics. This outcome highlights a broader pattern in India’s agreements with developed economies, where mobility provisions are structured in terms of service delivery and professional mobility rather than labour migration. The EU agreement is therefore likely to serve as an example for India’s ongoing negotiations with partners such as Canada, where mobility remains a politically sensitive issue.
Structural Constraints of Mode 4 Liberalisation
Mobility provisions are increasingly included in trade agreements, but their implementation remains uncertain. One of the main challenges is the overlap between trade commitments and domestic immigration policies, where visa regulations are what ultimately determine access. For example, in developed economies such as the European union, Mode 4 commitments are often subject to domestic visa categories and labour market tests, which essentially means that market access commitments in trade agreements do not automatically guarantee entry. Even where mobility provisions exist, entry may still depend on national immigration rules rather than trade commitments.
Social security contributions are another constraint. Indian professionals working in countries such as Germany and France often have to contribute to local social security systems without being able to claim full benefits unless social security agreements exist, and the cost of temporary movement. This has been a major issue in India’s negotiations with partners such as Canada, where social security coordination has been an important demand in mobility discussions.
The lack of Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) is also a hindrance to mobility in practice. Indian engineers, architects, and accountants often cannot practice directly in countries like the United Kingdom or Australia without having to go under local certification or licensing procedures, even when trade agreements provide for mobility. This makes regulatory recognition, rather than visas alone, an important determinant of Mode 4 trade. While Mode 4 provisions have expanded across trade agreements, their practical impact often remains shaped by domestic regulatory systems rather than through only trade commitments. Therefore, in practice, Mode 4 is negotiated in trade agreements but implemented through immigration law and professional regulation, which means that the real barriers to services trade are often regulatory rather than trade-related.
The Next Phase: The Pending Negotiations
India is pursuing agreements with the Gulf Cooperation Council, Canada, and Israel, each presenting distinct challenges. In the GCC, the task is less about securing new access than formalising existing practice: converting informal bilateral labour arrangements into enforceable Mode 4 commitments with defined timelines and qualification recognition frameworks. With Canada, the key issue is social security coordination, ensuring professionals are not double-taxed when working across systems. In Israel, mobility provisions are likely to be tightly scoped given the sensitivity of technology transfer in defence, cybersecurity, and advanced manufacturing.
Conclusion: Mobility as the Defining Pillar of India’s Trade Diplomacy
India’s evolving FTA architecture represents a deliberate strategic response to the structure of its comparative advantage. In an economy where the most valuable exports are professional services and specialised expertise, the ability to move people across borders is not a peripheral concern, it is central to competitiveness. The progression from the UAE CEPA to the ECTA and EFTA deals reflects a growing sophistication: early agreements established the principle of Mode 4 access; subsequent ones have built the institutional architecture needed to make it operational.
The challenge ahead is consistency and depth. Mobility commitments that are too narrowly scoped, too easily limited by domestic regulatory discretion, or too dependent on visa administration will not deliver their potential. As negotiations with the EU, Canada, and the GCC progress, the policy priority must be durable frameworks for recognition, portability, and legal certainty, not merely access on paper. That is the standard against which India’s Mode 4 strategy will ultimately be judged.
References
- Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 2023. Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement Outcomes. Canberra: Government of Australia.
- Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 2023. Australia-India ECTA Mobility Framework. Canberra: Government of Australia.
- Deloitte. 2022. UAE-India Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Analysis. Dubai: Deloitte Middle East.
- Deloitte Middle East. 2022. India-UAE CEPA Sectoral Coverage. Dubai: Deloitte.
- Times of India. 2025. “India–New Zealand FTA Decoded: Why the Deal Is More about Services, Jobs, and Mobility than Trade Volumes-GTRI Explains.” The Times of India, December 22, 2025.
- Government of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry. 2022. India–UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Official Text. New Delhi: Government of India.
- Reuters. 2025. “India-UAE Trade Crosses $100 Billion Since CEPA.” The Economic Times.
- Times of India. 2025. “India-Oman CEPA Signed with Tariff Cuts and Mobility Provisions.” The Times of India.
- Trade Promotion Council of India. 2022. India-UAE CEPA Provisions and Market Access. New Delhi: TPCI.
- World Bank. 2024. India Economic Update: Services and Growth. Washington, DC: World Bank.
- World Trade Organization. 2023. Trade in Services and the Movement of Natural Persons. Geneva: World Trade Organization.
Dr. Dhritishree Bordalai is a Senior Research Associate (International Relations) at the Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR), India.
Views expressed by the authors are personal and need not reflect or represent the views of the Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR).
Dr Dhritishree Bordalai holds a PhD from the Centre for European Studies (CES), School of International Studies (SIS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. She has a Certificate in Public Policy and Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode (IIM-K), and has been awarded the UGC-DAAD Short-Term Scholarship during her PhD at the Otto-Suhr-Institut für Politikwissenschaft (OSI), Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
She has attended several national and international conferences on her area of research and presented a paper at the Young Researchers Conference in JNU. Her core areas of research are migration, security and refugee studies.
