India and UK Trade

Author: Rani Matharoo, Gurpreet Singh

Abstract:
As we know that India and the united kingdom have been close allies for long-time. India and UK bilateral investment ties have continued to remain strong. UK is the third largest investor in India with accumulative FDI investment of $23.10 billion between 2000 to march 2016. India received $24.91 billion in FDI equity inflows from EU between April 2012 and May 2015. Thus, the EU along with the UK both remain important to India. Given the good trade and investment relations between the two countries, an India-UK FTA has been on the anvil since 2006 with several rounds of discussions and no concrete outcomes. However, it is being opined by Indian industry that the FTA could be easier to accomplish at a bilateral level following Brexit. According to a study carried out by the Commonwealth Secretariat post-Brexit vote a well negotiated FTA between the UK and India has the potential to increase bilateral trade by 26%. The UK’s membership of the EU may have acted as an obstacle to developing trade and investment partnerships with the rest of the world. However, post Brexit vote it is expected that the UK will be in a better position to forge closer trading ties. However, the Indian commerce ministry has made it clear that India and the UK can work on a FTA only after the latter is officially out of the EU, but the two countries have set up a joint working group to deliberate upon ways to strengthen commercial relationship. To know the relationship between India and UK pre and post Brexit paper has divided into two parts. Secondary data has been used to define relationship.

Keywords:JETCO, BTIA, FDI, FTA, Brexit.

DOI:

International Journal of Trade & Commerce (Vol: 6 Issue:2)