Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will meet representatives of export promotion councils (EPCs) here on May 8 to discuss matters related to the free trade agreement with the UK, an industry official said on Wednesday. India and the UK clinched a ‘landmark’ trade deal that will remove taxes on the export of labour-intensive products such as leather, footwear and clothing, while making imports of whisky and cars from Britain cheaper, in a bid to double trade between the two economies to USD 120 billion by 2030. The world’s fifth and sixth-largest economies concluded the deal after three years of on-and-off negotiations.
The pact lowers tariffs on 99 per cent of Indian goods to zero in the UK market while allowing Indian workers to travel to the UK for work without changing Britain’s point-based immigration system.
Taxes on the export of Indian clothing, frozen prawns, jewellery and gems will be cut.
And so will be the import of whisky and gin from the UK after the treaty halved the tariff to 75 per cent initially and to 40 per cent by the 10th year.
The official said that all the senior representatives of EPCs and Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) will participate in the deliberations, besides senior officials of the ministry.
