Team Blitz India
LNDON: Shedding light on priorities for the India-UK Free Trade Agreement (FTA), India’s High Commissioner to UK Vikram Doraiswami highlighted the importance of international trade and services. He emphasised that the goal of the FTA was to facilitate easy movement for business and trade purposes rather than focusing on visas as a primary means of bringing people to the UK.
“Visas are not the first priority for the India-UK FTA. It is not a means to bring people to the UK. Instead, our focus will be on providing international trade and services and enabling people to travel for business and trade purposes,” said Doraiswami at the India Global Forum in London recently, The forum, an annual event that brings together Indian and British policymakers, industrialists and others, is organised by Manoj Ladwa, a corporate lawyer-turned-Government affairs adviser and close associate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi
14 rounds of talks
India and the UK have been holding talks on a trade agreement since 2022. So far 14 rounds of talks have been completed. India has been demanding greater ease of movement for highly skilled professionals (such as those in the IT and healthcare fields) to come to the U.K. to deliver services. It has also sought a reduction in tariffs on a number of goods. The UK wants a greater access to the Indian services sector and a cut in duties on various goods, including whiskey and cars.
Doraiswami said India was looking for a reasonable level of movement of natural persons to deliver services in the territory of the trade partner (the UK in this case) under Mode 4 of GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services).
Referring to intra-company transfers, he said there were over 970 subsidiaries of Indian companies in the UK and that firms would want an easier movement of employees across borders. Regarding student visas, Doraiswami said it was up to the British electorate to decide on questions such as the post-study work visa in the UK The programme was recently questioned by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Government on the grounds that the visas were being abused as a door to migration to the UK The UK Government’s independent adviser, however, had declared that the system was not being abused. Several of Sunak’s Cabinet colleagues also opposed restricting the system.
