Boris Johnson will host bilateral talks with India’s prime minister on Tuesday, announcing the potential for up to £1bn of new trade and investment in a virtual meeting after a planned visit to the country was twice delayed because of its Covid crisis.
The UK prime minister had been due to meet Narendra Modi in Delhi last week but the visit was cancelled because of the severity of the pandemic there. On Sunday, India recorded 3,689 deaths, its highest daily toll yet, and hospitals have been scrambling for oxygen to treat patients. Britain has sent £6m in medical supplies over the past week.
Johnson and Modi will agree a number of key investments and the pathway towards a new free trade deal at Tuesday’s meeting, which Downing Street said would create 6,500 British jobs and contain more than £533m of new Indian investment into the UK, in sectors such as health and technology. No timeframe has been given for the job creation or total investments.
Among the new deals announced were 1,000 jobs at the technology firm Infosys, which is owned by Rishi Sunak’s father-in-law, one of India’s most successful entrepreneurs, whose daughter Akshata Murty married Sunak in 2009.
The investment includes £240m by the Serum Institute of India in its vaccine business and a new sales office, expected to generate new business worth more than $1bn. One trial the institute has started in the UK includes a one-dose nasal vaccine for coronavirus, in partnership with Codagenix INC.
The agreement between Johnson and Modi includes an enhanced trade partnership, which is not as deep and comprehensive as free trade deals with some other countries such as the EU and Japan. It will lower non-tariff barriers on fruit and medical devices, with the expectation that this will allow British businesses to export more of their products to India.
The deal includes lifting restrictions to enable fruit producers across the UK to export British apples, pears and quince to India for the first time – although fruit and vegetable exports are a relatively minor part of the UK economy, at just £1.3bn in 2020 to the whole world, out of total of £310.1bn.
Total UK trade, goods and services, exports and imports, was worth almost £1.2tn last year, making £1bn a relatively small boost in practice. The deal is also small in comparison with UK-EU trade: in 2019, UK exports to the EU were £294bn.
The intention is to lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive deal, likely to be highly reliant on deeper cooperation on visas and migration policy. The Home Office is due to announce more on Tuesday about a deal that could allow thousands more Indian students to enrol in UK universities in exchange for India agreeing to smooth deportations for those living in the UK without a visa.
The pathway towards a free trade deal will state the ambition to double the value of UK-India trade again by 2030. No 10 said the market would be bigger than the EU and US combined – by far the largest market the UK has committed to negotiating a trade deal with to date.
Before the meeting, Johnson said: “Like every aspect of the UK-India relationship, the economic links between our countries make our people stronger and safer. Each and every one of the more than 6,500 jobs we have announced today will help families and communities build back from coronavirus and boost the British and Indian economies.”
• This article was amended on 4 May 2021 to clarify that the £3.1bn figure for UK exports was for fruit and vegetables, not just fruit
