 | « Back to article | Print this article |
In an effort to give further boost the burgeoning trade and investment between India and UK, a high-level British delegation, led by Trade Minister Ian Pearson, will visit this country next week.
The delegation will be in India for four days from January 15 before proceeding to Sri Lanka.
The trip is the British government's third trade and investment visit to India in a year and will be the first visit to Sri Lanka since the new Mahinda Rajapakse government assumed office in November.
Pearson will be accompanied in India by a 25-strong business delegation, including Indo-British Partnership Network chairman Karan Bilimoria, a leading non-resident Indian. Besides, the delegation includes senior representatives from companies such as Standard Chartered Bank, GlaxoSmithKline, Virgin Atlantic and the London Stock Exchange.
"The relationship between Britain and India is a strong and special one. The potential to significantly increase trade, business and investment, both ways, between our great nations is enormous," Bilimoria said.
While British investors are keen to invest in India, the UK has become one of the main beneficiaries of the increased desire by Indian businesses to expand abroad.
Indian companies were behind 36 inward investment projects in the UK in 2004-05, compared with 28 in 2003-04 and 19 in 2002-03.
The record puts India in eighth position in terms of countries announcing investment deals in the UK. That puts India behind the US and Germany but in level with China and ahead of Italy and Netherlands.
According to official figures, Indian investment led to 1,418 new jobs in 2004-05, in sixth position behind the US, Germany, Japan, Ireland and France.
The surge in moves by Indian companies shows that while the expanding Indian economy has led to more interest by western companies in setting up operations in the sub-continent, the investment flow is by no means one way.
Indian government measures to liberalise the economy since the early 1990s have made an "enormous" difference to the ability of Indian companies to set up operations abroad, said William Pedder, chief executive of inward investment at UK Trade and Investment, a government agency.
Last week Mahindra and Mahindra, one of India's largest industrial conglomerates, became the latest in a series of large Indian companies to announce investment projects in the UK, through the acquisition of Stokes, an engineering business based near Birmingham.
It came after Tata Group said it was setting up a development centre in the Midlands that could eventually employ 1,000 to capitalise on new ideas in vehicle technology.
Mahindra's takeover of Stokes, which employs 240 people, follows a similar logic. Hemant Luthra, head of the company's systems and automotive technology division, said Stokes will act as a "front end" of Mahindra in Europe to link with automotive customers throughout Europe. The work on making parts would be shared out between high-cost centres in the UK and low-cost factories in India.
Nestor, Nicholas Piramal and Wockhardt are among several Indian medicines businesses to have bought companies in the UK, partly to beef up their own research and development capabilities.