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Britain said today it wants to be a “leading partner” as India puts concerted efforts to achieve the growth potential, and offered help in financial services and infrastructure building efforts.
“The motto of Prime Minister Modi ‘Good times are coming’ has truly taken roots. And simply put, Britain wants to be a leading partner for you as you build the good times,” Economic Secretary to the British treasury Andrea Leadsom said here.
“We want to work with you to establish your goals,” she said, offering help in financial services and infrastructure sectors.
She also said Britain would like to help in internationalisation of the rupee like it did for the Chinese Yuan.
“We would continue to be one of the strongest voices calling for an ambitious EU-India broad-based trade and investment agreement,” she said.
It can be noted that a lot of nations, including China, Japan and the US, have shown keen interest in partnering with India and offered help on various sectors.
Touching on the Indo-British trade ties, Leadsom said England is the biggest investor among the G-20 nations in India. British imports from India grew 33 per cent in the last four years, taking the bilateral trade volume to 16 billion pounds now.
“Nurturing and expanding this partnership has been a key objective of my government. We want to strengthen links between London and Mumbai as the financial centres,” she said.
Leadsom was speaking after launching a Financial Partnership between the two nations. The partnership, driven by corporate bigwigs on either side (Uday Kotak of Kotak Mahindra Bank and Standard Life chairman Gerry Grimstone), is having the support of both the governments.
The partnership was announced during the 7th round of the Indo-British Economic and Financial Dialogues which took place between chancellor George Osborne and finance minister Arun Jaitley in July.
Kotak and Grimstone will present a report on the progress of the partnership at the next round of the dialogue, Leadsom said, listing out the focus areas for collaboration.
It will include collaboration to develop Indian corporate bonds market, how to regulate a safe and stable financial system, enhancing financial training, supporting Indian effort on financial inclusion and enhancing cross-border provision of financial and insurance services, she said.
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