Duke of York says UK keen to tap Indian business

New Delhi, Mar 10 : Special Representative of Department of Trade and Investment, Government of UK, met Minister of State for Industry Ashwani Kumar here today in order to enhance trade and investment flows between India and UK.

During their bilateral meeting, useful exchanges took place on enhancing India-UK Trade and Investment flows. The visit comes right after the annual summit visit by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to New Delhi in January 2008 and assumes special significance in respect of trade and investment relations.

Kumar informed Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward, the Duke of York, about the Government of India's focus on education and skill upgradation.

"From our perspective we think that as a country this is a country where, in most cases business should think that this is where they should be, not a question of whether we might think of coming. So we are looking at every opportunity that we can. Huge amount of liaisons are going on to encourage business in both directions," Edward said.

Kumar and Edward discussed a wide range of international trade regime and the hostile treatment to India under the new Visa regime.

"We have discussed about the ... possibilities in India with the help of British educational institutions. We have talked about the scope of progressive possibilities in the services sector and we have also discussed about the whole range of international trade regime, the WTO possibilities of the DOHA round," Kumar said.

"We also discussed about the fact that there will be no hostile discrimination against India in the new Visa regime. And we have also discussed about the ways and the means to further enhance the level of Indo-UK economic engagement," he added.

UK is the third largest investor in India with cumulative FDI of 4.13 billion dollars as India's investment in UK.

India, as one of the biggest emerging market economies, is an influential player in the Doha trade round.

ANI