British Prime Minister David Cameron is unleashing his India strategy as he leads a mammoth delegation of seven Cabinet ministers and top business leaders to India this week.
The focus of the visit — which includes chancellor of exchequer George Osborne, foreign secretary William Hague, business secretary Vince Cable, defence secretary Liam Fox, minister for universities and science David Willets and minister for energy for energy and climate change Greg Barker — will be on improving strategic partnership and not just enhancing trade, according to a source.
“The focus of the visit is not just getting trade deals, but on building a long-term and strong strategic partnership,” added the source, who requested anonymity. “India matters. Its economy is growing at three times the speed of ours. By 2030 it may have overtaken us in size,” as Mr Osborne explained in a newspaper article on Sunday.
Mr Cameron will lead the strongest British delegation to visit India in modern times, the chancellor said, highlighting the importance of India for the Tory-LibDem coalition government, which put emphasis on its relationship with India by promising “an enhanced partnership with India” in Queen Elizabeth-II’s speech at the state opening of Parliament in May.
India is now the fourth largest investor in the UK and bilateral trade between India and UK was £11.5 billion last year. Britain wants to increase it manifold and has made it clear that it collaboration with India “can make a real difference to jobs and prosperity in both our nations, and to solving our shared global challenges.” The Cameron delegation will visit Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi and the high-level government-to-government talks will be held in New Delhi on July 29.
The business, sport and cultural aspects of the visit will be highlighted by the presence of Vodafone, BAe and Standard Chartered chief executives are travelling with Mr Cameron along with Olympians Sebastian Coe, Kelly Holmes and Steve Redgrave, top academics, British Museum and British Library directors and a large group of stop British journalists.
Britain is keen to make some headlines over the potential deals during Mr Cameron’s visit. India is widely expected in the UK sign a deal to buy 57 Hawks from BAe Systems. “There are some really big projects which are nearing conclusion, amongst them is nuclear power. I think one of the big areas where India has a large demand and we have potential supply is higher education,” Mr Cable told this newspaper last week, describing the projects and deals that could be announced during the Cameron visit. India has already complained about the newly-imposed cap on immigration in the UK. However, the coalition government has repeatedly made it clear that it would not allow immigration to become an impediment to foreign investment in UK.
“On the visas, we are very conscious. Indian companies have made it very clear that they do need to bring people in and we understand that.”