Javid in preliminary talk with Indians post-Brexit

Sajid Javid, UK Business Secretary, has started preliminary trade talks with India post-Brexit.

His meeting with the Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitaraman, finance minister Arun Jaitley and other senior government officials in Delhi to prepare for a free bilateral trade agreement between the two countries once Britain has exited the EU.

According to Javid who attending several global trade meeting  in the coming months including visits to the India, China, Japan, South Korea and United States, “ Following the referendum result, my absolute priority is making sure the UK has the tools it needs to continue to compete on the global stage.” His visit to India comes after Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne met a Chinese government delegation in London yesterday to foster “Stronger trade ties” with the world’s second largest economy. The business secretary will also be in Mumbai to meet senior Tata Group board members to discuss the ongoing sale of their UK steel-making assets.

In the meanwhile, Tata Steel is in talks with its German Rival ThyssenKrupp who also makes elevators about merging their European operations in a deal that to put some life into the stricken Port Talbot steelworks. The Indian conglomerate’s proposals give a glimmer of hope to the 11,000 Port Talbot steel workers, the collection of British factories, put up for sale in March 2016 after over £1m losses per day. Koushik Chatterjee, Group executive Director at Tata Steel, said the talks could lead to the creation of “high-quality world-class strip steel business”. UK ministers promised to take up to a 25 per cent stake in Tata Steel UK and provided hundreds of millions of pounds in loan to either Tata steel or its successor and also offered to change the law to cut the liabilities of the British Steel Pension scheme, which has an estimated £700m deficit.

UK is the largest G20 investor in India, while India invests more in the UK than the rest of the European Union put together. India also emerged as the third largest source of FDI for the UK. Last year, bilateral trade in goods and service between two countries passed £16.55bn,

“UK is our largest business partner, as more than 30% of exports go the UK” according to Dr jagdish Hoshi of Jarosniv Exports.