Comments
Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and Foreign Secretary William Hague are set to visit Mumbai and Delhi next week ahead of the Budget – the country’s first ministerial visits to India since the election.
The ministers will begin their visit in Mumbai on July 7. Though just two days before the Budget, Osborne is set to meet with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi on July 8, while Hague is set to meet External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.
Osborne’s visit to New Delhi will continue the annual India-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue established in 2005 which aims to strengthen the financial and economic relationship between the two countries, through discussions on topics ranging from sustainable economic development, regulatory and financial system reform and international development. Last year the Dialogue took place in London, with former Finance Minister P Chidambaram attending.
“Our priorities will be to expand trade and investment, enhance our education links, strengthen cooperation on defence and security, increase collaboration on science and innovation, and build our people-to-people links through the UK’s 1.5 million Indian diaspora,” Hague told the House of Commons last month.
Among the issues likely to figure prominently in the discussions include measures to boost trade between the two countries, particularly through the proposed Bangalore-Mumbai Economic corridor, seen in Britain as a major opportunity for the country to increase investment in India.
French engineering group EGIS won the tender to conduct the feasibility study for the 1,000-km corridor earlier this year, but the UK has maintained its eagerness to be India’s main partner in the project.
Other issues likely to come up include the application of retrospective tax law to Vodafone’s acquisition of Hutchinson Whampoa’s Indian mobile operations in 2007. In the UK there are high hopes that the change of government could break the impasse after Vodafone launched international arbitration proceedings against India in April.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.