UK and India poised to sign wide-ranging free trade agreement

UK Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and India Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal are poised to sign a free trade agreement today.

The UK government claims the deal will add £6bn in new investment, creating jobs in aerospace, technology and manufacturing, and up to £4.8bn to UK economic output.

The UK already imports £11bn in goods from India, but liberalised tariffs on Indian goods will make it easier and cheaper to buy their products. India’s average tariff on UK products will drop from 15% to 3% and UK businesses will now be able to bid for approximately 40,000 Indian tenders for goods, services and construction projects.

Notably for industrial gases, the deal commits both sides to work together to support development, uptake, and distribution of green technologies in clean energy industries.

One exemplar business in the mix is Carbon Clean. It is a UK-based leader in carbon capture, with projected UK export contributions of £83m over the next five years, has invested £7.6m in a Global Innovation Centre in Mumbai. And this outward direct investment should unlock 250 jobs across London, Glasgow and Huddersfield as well as 100 jobs in Mumbai.

Johnson Matthey, a UK-based leader in chemicals and sustainable technologies, has also secured recent contracts of over £20m for process licensing, engineering, and catalysts supply in India.

The company will also invest £4m in a new plant at Taloja (Maharashtra) and to double its capacity at an existing site in Panki, Uttar Pradesh, with contracts are helping to create up to 20,000 jobs in India during the construction phase.

In May, US industrial tech firm Honeywell agreed to acquire Johnson Matthey’s Catalyst Technologies business for £1.8bn ($2.4bn).