The UK and India are “very close” to agreeing a long-delayed free trade agreement just weeks after the two countries restarted talks, a senior Indian diplomat said.
“We are very close, and this agreement is going to be a game-changer for both of us,” Nidhi Tripathi, economic minister in India’s High Commission in London, told delegates at the British Chambers of Commerce trade conference in London on Thursday. The situation with the agreement was not commented on by a UK Department for Business and Trade spokesperson.
Tripathi’s remarks suggest envoys are finally homing in on a trade deal between the two nations more than three years after the dialog was launched under Britain’s then Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The new Labour government’s business and trade secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, traveled to India last month to restart the talks, which had been paused in 2024 due to elections in both the UK and India. One of the British officials who was close to the talks said following the visit that the tone of the talks was more positive than they could remember at any other time. That was helped by the fact that Reynolds appeared to get along quite well with his counterpart Piyush Goyal, the official added.
The two countries have had more than a dozen rounds of talks since they began in January 2022, and a string of self-imposed deadlines to complete the negotiations were missed by Johnson and his successor Rishi Sunak, who had also hoped to close a deal before last July’s UK general election.
