Free trade agreements are not easy to bring about and the one between India and the UK — signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the UK — is a “historic moment” that will benefit both nations, Sunil Bharti Mittal, the Chairperson of Bharti Enterprises, has said.
In an exclusive interview with NDTV, Mr Mittal, whose group has had a presence in the UK for over a decade, said this deal will not just benefit India’s farmers, but her artisans, MSMEs and even professionals like doctors and lawyers.
Why this deal worked out, he said, is a “high degree of complementarity” between India and the UK, unlike most cases where “what you want is what the other side resists and vice versa”.
“What did India give? A huge market. That is evident. Big talent pool. Very, very special ingredient today in the world. And then, of course, it has low-cost manufacturing availability. On the other hand, UK has technologies, especially high-tech ones on nuclear, space, on defence, biosciences,” he said.
This, he said, is where India can benefit by tying up with the British companies or British companies investing in India.
It also allows UK access to India’s small and medium industries — leather, leather footwear, hand tools, machine tools, gems and jewellery.
“There are lots of small, small things which are not made in the UK and are imported from China or other places, now get a leg up under this FTA. So you should start seeing the goods, which are currently at about $23 billion. The machine exports, $14 billion, could probably double from there,” he said.
All of this, he said, adds up to an “extremely high” complementarity — “If you combine these two, it’s a force multiplier,” he added.
The Free Trade agreement will also work well in favour of Indian professionals like doctors or lawyers who earlier had to get additional degrees or sit for exams if they wanted to practice in the UK, he said.
“And equally, those people who are coming from here to India, because as you set up shops there from the British side, they will also need to send people. And recognizing the parity or creating a parity between the two sides on qualification will be helpful,” Mr Mittal said.
Chandrajeet Banerjee, the Director General of the Confederation of Indian Industry told NDTV that the FTA will also lead to free flow of talent, doing away with the earlier situation where visa proved a bottleneck.
“The UK has limited professionals in many, many sectors. And their ability to service many companies, many industries which are investing into the UK would be limited given the lack of skills that are required in those sectors. So to that extent, I don’t see that Indian companies would not be able to have their professionals being involved to grow in the UK, to bring in them,” he said.
“Mobility, again, has found a lot of mention in the trade agreement and it actually gets facilitated by this trade agreement and enhanced by this trade agreement,” he added.
