Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a bilateral meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the sidelines of the G20 Summit, in Rio de Janeiro, Monday, November 18, 2024.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: India and the United Kingdom (UK) are likely to resume talks on their free trade agreement (FTA) in early 2025, the Commerce Ministry said on Wednesday, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his British counterpart Keir Starmer gave the green signal to restart negotiations.
“The dates for the FTA talks in early 2025 would be finalized through diplomatic channels at an early date,” the Ministry said in a statement.
It added that the discussions would resume from the progress achieved in the previous rounds of negotiations. India and the United Kingdom held 14 rounds of negotiations before it was put on hold in early 2024 due to general elections in both the countries.
While there is continuity from India’s side with Prime Minister Modi returning to power, the UK witnessed a change in government. The FTA negotiations started in early 2022. The then UK PM Boris Johnson and Modi had set a target to ink the deal by October 2022. Even after 14 rounds of negotiations under three British Prime Ministers, the deal remained elusive.
Starmer is the fourth British PM since negotiations began. Modi and Starmer held a bilateral meeting on Tuesday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rio De Janeiro, where they agreed to relaunch trade talks.
“The FTA talks would resume the discussions from the progress achieved previously and seek to bridge the gaps for expeditiously closing the trade deal,” the ministry said.
The ministry underlined that the “United Kingdom is a priority country for the achievement of our ambitious $1 trillion export target by FY2030, with our exports to the UK expected to reach $30 billion by 2029-30.”
The bilateral trade between India and the UK increased to $21.34 billion in the financial year ended March 2024 from $20.36 billion in 2022-23.
As per the latest official data, India-UK bilateral trade increased by 12.38 per cent to $7.32 billion in April-September 2024 period from $6.51 billion recorded during the corresponding period of the last year.
Mineral fuels, machinery, and precious stones, pharmaceuticals, apparels, iron and steel and chemicals lead India’s export basket to the UK, contributing a 68.72 per cent share of total exports.