In the last five years, India's total trade with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries went up more than four-fold from 5.55 billion dollars in 2000-1 to 23.42 billion dollars in 2005-6, he pointed out during his keynote address at the inaugural session of India-GCC Industrial Forum in Mumbai on Tuesday.

Nath said that as far as India is concerned, the Gulf region was at par with the United States in terms of demand creation and market. "It is already a target market for more than three quarters of India's main export products, including fresh fruits and vegetables", he added.

India is planning to increase its export of agricultural products by several fold to GCC counties and a team of Agricultural Export Promotion Council would visit the Gulf countries to study for this, Nath said.

He said human resources problem faced by India is holding up conclusion of FTA with GCC as India is already negotiating such agreements with other countries.

Oman's Commerce and Industry Minister Maqbool Ali Sultan expressed disappointment with the slow pace of talks on FTA between India and GCC and wanted officials of the two sides to take up the issue on priority basis.

"I'm disappointed with the FTA talks between India and GCC. Almost nothing has happened since the last meeting in June 2006", he said.

He, however, expressed the hope that FTA talks would conclude by this year-end or early 2008 and a formal agreement is signed by September 2008.