“We can actually sign an agreement before the Indian election. I suspect that that is not necessarily going to be the case because I don't want to use any election as a deadline,” said UK Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch with reference to the fourteenth round of negotiations towards a UK-India free trade agreement (FTA).
“It is possible that that will be done but I am very resistant to deadlines being set on trade negotiations because it runs down the clock. It is very possible that we can sign but I am not using it as a deadline for the work that I am carrying out basically,” she said.
Addressing a Global Trade conference at Chatham House in London last week, the senior Cabinet minister stressed that she wanted to ensure a “commercially meaningful” pact with India and that will take its own course.
In her keynote address at the event, she noted: “I have to strike the right balance between embracing the import of goods from developing countries to help them grow with the need to maintain the high standards on quality and safety which the British people rightly expect. We make choices.
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“Our free trade agreements are helping us make the right choices because they are all about diversification and resilience. That is what the Indo-Pacific tilt is about, but we need to make sure that the facts are out there.”
Both India and the UK are now in a general election year, with the Indian elections expected as soon as next month and the UK elections likely later. Given the constraints of the political landscape, the governments are keen to clinch a deal that would be seen as a big win for both economies.
While the UK wants India to cut high tariffs on its good exports such as cars and whisky, India is demanding fairness of rules applied to Indian professionals.
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Prime Ministers Rishi Sunak and Narendra Modi have repeatedly committed to delivering a “landmark trade deal” which benefits businesses and workers in both countries and grows trade in both goods and services. However, after over two years and 14 rounds of intense negotiations, the clock may just be running out on the FTA due to the election cycle of both nations.
