The roundtable will be hosted at Parliament House and chaired by Baroness Usha Prashar (CBE), a crossbench member of the House of Lords. Former president of the Royal Commonwealth Society, she has been the director of a variety of public and private sector organisations including the Runnymede Trust, National Literacy Trust, and National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

The session will focus on the following four questions:

1. How does trade and trade facilitation policies impact women? Discussion will focus on India.

2. What can UK firms and governments do to ensure that the benefits of trade in India are more equitably distributed?

3. What are the challenges in designing trade policies that are more inclusive of women? How can we overcome them? Discussion will focus on India.

4. How can UK civil society build awareness amongst consumers to make purchasing decisions that are mindful of gender inclusivity?

The discussants at the roundtable include academics, British parliamentarians, UK- and India-based firm owners, representatives from the Department of Business and Trade, FICCI UK, Trade Strategy, Mott MacDonald and Transform Trade.

Following the lecture, a Q&A session was held, led by Dr Kamini Gupta (Lecturer, King’s Business School) and Dr Walter Ladwig (Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Department of War Studies). The lecture was introduced by King’s Principal and President, Professor Shitij Kapur.

The event was hosted in conjunction with the Economic and Social Research Council and Indian Council of Social Science Research funded grant Enablers and Obstacles for UK-India Trade: Banks and Diasporas (UKIT- Enob). UKIT-Enob aims to understand key enablers and obstacles to UK-India trade from the perspective of small export-oriented firms in India. The project is led by Dr Sunil Mitra Kumar (King’s India Institute) and Dr Kamini Gupta (King’s Business School) in collaboration with Dr Prateek Gupta (IIM, Bangalore) and Dr Param Shah (FICCI, UK).

Event details can be found here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/indias-foreign-policy-and-trade-relations

The lecture was co-organised by ‘Enablers and Obstacles to UK-India Trade’ project team and NISAU (National Indian Students and Alumni Union UK). It was followed by a panel discussion with project co-investigators Kamini Gupta and Sunil Kumar, followed by Q&A with the audience. A recording of the lecture was later broadcast by India’s leading English TV news channel, NDTV, in India.

A recording of the lecture is also available on YouTube:

This conclave brought together around 200 business leaders from India and the UK along with senior government figures including the British High Commissioner to India. Dr Kumar moderated a panel that focused on the key sectors that will enable the growth in trade and investment between the two countries and are significant in developing partnership in vital and growing sectors such as defence, technology, manufacturing, infrastructure sectors amongst others. Panel members included: Nandita Sahgal-Tully, MD – Infrastructure Asset Management, ThomasLloyd Group; Ashish Kumar Gupta, Head of EMEA & Corporate VP (IT Outsourcing), HCL Technologies; Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Senior Fellow for South Asia, The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Tweets by SbiFicci

The background and focus of the panel discussion was as follows: On January 13th 2022, India and the UK resumed negotiations for signing a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). As an interim step in lieu of a full agreement, both countries are open to signing an interim ‘early harvest’ pact. While India is seeking easier market access for agricultural products and better access to visas and immigration for Indian citizens, the UK wants India to lower tariffs on exports including whisky, automobile and wind turbine components. Ambitions aside, at present both countries have a modest share in each other’s share of trade. As of 2019, although UK is India’s 3rd largest trading partner, India is 15th largest for the UK. In relative trade terms, both the USA and China have significantly higher trade shares with both countries. UK-India Trade: FTA negotiations, Indian exports & the role of small firms And, while the significance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and MSMEs for India’s economic growth, trade and employment is widely recognized, it is less clear how a UK-India trade agreement will effect SME and MSME activities and role in Indian exports. Questions for the panel discussion: What are the prospects of a UK-India FTA being signed soon given the current pace and sticking points in negotiations? Should we expect relative trade shares to change significantly given the existing primacy of USA and China in both countries’ trade portfolios? In what time horizon? What is the importance of Indian SMEs and MSMEs in UK-India trade in both goods and services? In what ways and to what extent do the current negotiations reflect the needs and priorities of export-oriented SMEs and MSMEs in India?

The event details can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/uk-india-trade-fta-negotiations-indian-exports-the-role-of-small-firms-tickets-259363722877?aff=odeimcmailchimp&mc_cid=d046fa83dd&mc_eid=UNIQID#