The Hindu Business Line : Prince Andrew, Minister discuss trade issues

TALKING TRADE: Prince Andrew, The Duke of York, UK's Special Representative for International Trade and Investments, flanked by the past President of FICCI, Mr Y.K. Modi, and the Vice-Chairman, Jindal Steel, Mr Naveen Jindal, arriving to attend an India-UK Business Relations meeting in the Capital on Monday. -- Kamal Narang

Prince Andrew of the British royal family, who is visiting India as the Special Representative of the United Kingdom (UK) for International Trade and Investment, today met the Minister of State for Commerce and Industries, Dr Ashwani Kumar.

The discussions were focussed on further increasing the two-way trade and commerce between India and the UK, according to an official release.

Prince Andrew and Dr Kumar also discussed the possibility of opening up of the legal services sector in the country as well as of further liberalisation of foreign direct investment norms and reforms in the banking sector.

Dr Kumar informed the visiting delegates about the huge opportunities that India offers for UK companies to invest and work in India.

Earlier during the day, at a meeting in the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FICCI), Prince Andrew made an impassioned plea to free up the UK legal and financial services to work in India for upscaling the skill sets of Indian workforce and speed up expenditure on renewing infrastructure.

"In the construction sector alone, the Indian Government has earmarked $15 billion over the next 10 years to upgrade and extend airport capacity in the country. This is an area in which UK companies could have major share. Oil and gas and power sector require billions of dollars of investment in the near future," Dr Kumar said, citing the success of Carin Energy, Shell, Prudential Insurance, Power Gen UK as prominent examples of successful UK companies in India.

During the meeting, Dr Kumar, in particular focussed upon possibilities for expansion of the Indo-UK trade and investment in manufacturing, infrastructure, IT, service sector, food processing, textile machinery and advance technology products. Prince Andrew spoke of the immense contribution of the Indian diasporas in UK's economic development and hoped for a further consolidation of Indo-UK relationship through the deepening of economic and political relations between the two countries, the release added.

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