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Latest on CBI’s policy engagement in India

How the CBI is working for members to unblock market access issues in India through the JETCO process.

24 Aug 2020, 3 min read

India’s Union Commerce Minister Mr Piyush Goel met the UK’s Secretary of State for International Trade Ms Liz Truss virtually in the fourteenth Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) meeting in the last week of July. Both sides agreed to an Enhanced Trade Partnership as part of a roadmap that could lead to a future Free Trade Agreement. The Enhanced Trade Partnership will seek to address non-tariff barriers to trade and will establish a specific dialogue to explore routes to removing tariff barriers. Both governments also expanded the scope of working jointly to remove non-tariff barriers to include the services sector. So far, both governments have been working jointly on food and drink, IT and life sciences. Read the joint statement here.

Trade between the UK and India was worth £24bn last year alone. According to UK government figures released on 10 July, India became the second-largest source of foreign direct investment in the UK after the US in 2019 creating 5429 new jobs. Read here

So, it is welcome that DIT is stepping up its engagement on India which is a long-standing CBI ask.

Work has been underway to reduce barriers to trade since both countries completed a Joint Trade Review in 2018 and the CBI has been actively engaged to input business feedback.

CBI President Lord Karan Bilimoria participated in a select virtual roundtable  with UK Trade Minister Jayawardena in early July, before the JETCO meeting. Minister Jayawardena set out his ambition to remove barriers for businesses across a range of sectors including food and drink, healthcare and life sciences, IT and data, chemicals and services.

Karan set out three key priorities for CBI members:

  1. Ease of Doing Business: CBI’s work on Ease of Doing Business in India through its publication ‘Sterling Access- UK companies supporting India’s growth’ highlights top challenges faced by CBI members in India. It includes:

- Need to rationalise the number of regulators in different sectors

- Need to take a risk-based approach to regulation

- Need to simplify regulation related to metrology

- Technical barriers to trade need to be rectified by asking India to be open to adopting international certifications and standards.

  1. SMEs: The CBI is keen for closer cooperation between Small and Medium Enterprises in both countries and build a mechanism between the two governments tailored to support SMEs.
  2. Services sector: The CBI has supported a comprehensive report earlier this year on the issues raised by non-financial services sector companies in India and has now been approached the DIT in India to support future work in the services sector as the CBI is well-placed to drive JETCO’s work in the space and advise the UK government on it.

Next steps

The CBI will continue to engage on market access work in India and raise the issues of CBI members through UK-India JETCO and business consultations.

Get involved

To hear more about the CBI’s work in India and share your experiences of market access barriers with us, get in touch with Sakshi Jain.