UK and India to Implement Trade Deal on July 15

LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and India’s Narendra Modi agreed on the sidelines of the G7 leaders summit to implement the trade deal they signed nearly a year ago.

The two countries announced Wednesday that the deal will enter into force on July 15, after Starmer and Modi met in the spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, on Tuesday evening.

“We are bringing our landmark trade deal with India into force as quickly as we can, because we want businesses and the public to feel the benefits immediately, including cuts to tariffs of £400m within the first year alone,” said U.K. Business and Trade Secretary, Peter Kyle.

Firms now have 28 days, Kyle said, to prepare to begin exporting to India under new provisions that slash tariffs on whisky from 150 percent to 40 percent and new quotas that cut duties on cars from 100 percent to 10 percent.

The deal is the largest trade pact the U.K. has forged post-Brexit and is expected to boost U.K. GDP by £4.8 billion annually.

Implementation follows last-minute wrangling over Britain’s new steel protections between the U.K.'s Kyle and his Indian counterpart, Piyush Goyal, in New Delhi on June 2.

Kyle flew to New Delhi after Indian officials said they would resist implementing the deal.

India sought reassurances about access to the U.K. market for its exporters as the government moves to reduce its tariff-free quotas on steel imports and raise tariffs outside those caps to 50 percent by July 1.

“Steel has come up in those discussions, and obviously part of that is determining what size quota India will have in all of this,” said a senior steel industry source. “The Indians have been quite tough negotiators on that point.”

India is the largest non-EU steel exporter to the U.K. Britain imported £461.5 million in steel and iron from India last year, according to the United Nations international trade database.

The U.K.-India Double Contributions Convention Agreement will come into force at the same time, allowing skilled professionals from both countries on work visas to continue paying into their state pensions for five years without also having to pay social security contributions in the country they’ve moved to.