BRITISH POLL CLOUD OVER INDIA-UK FTA, FREEZE ON TRADE EXPANSION

‘Both India and UK are in election mode. Until the top leadership is settled, many things remain hung.’

- NIVEDITA MUKHERJEE

The India-UK free trade agreement (FTA) appears to be heading for another stalemate after 13 rounds of negotiations over 2 years and several deadlines, as a successful fruition of the deal looks elusive, even as the UK and India reiterated the ongoing commitment to negotiate a mutually beneficial FTA during the annual UK-India Strategic Dialogue meeting on 17 May 2024. Amidst many predictions ranging from an early harvest to the much discussed Diwali deal—that itself is now past two years— trade analysts, experts and the government, are betting on the progressive strides by both sides, the build-up of political and economic will, not to mention the lucrative spillovers of duty concessions—to craft a pact that can be gamechanger for many of India’s industry sectors.

“Both India and UK are in election mode. Until the top leadership is settled, many things remain hung,” says Arpita Mukherjee, Professor at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). “The top leadership has to take a position as to how much they want to bend and how much they want to ignore of the issue. If they give certain instructions that of the 10 issues, let eight be resolved and leave the rest, matters can be resolved very fast,” says Mukherjee. The India-UK FTA covers 26 subjects, key ones being goods, services, intellectual property, government procurement, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, competition, rules of origin, trade facilitation, customs cooperation, small and medium-sized enterprises, trade and sustainable development, labour, gender, digital trade, dispute settlement, general provisions and transparency.