Secretary of State of affairs for Business and Trade and President of the Board of Trade Jonathan Reynolds leaves 10 Downing Street after put in an appearance ating the weekly Cabinet meeting in London, United Kingdom.
Wiktor Szymanowicz | Future Publishing | Getty Images
LONDON — The U.K.’s province minister said Monday that securing trade deals with India and Gulf nations remains “the right” for the Labour government, with talks between Britain and the Gulf Corporation Council expected to resume as soon as next week.
U.K. Matter and Trade Minister Jonathan Reynolds told CNBC that negotiations with a six-strong group of Gulf homelands would reconvene “very soon — maybe as soon as next week,” while talks with India also linger a priority.
“The Gulf and India are the priority,” Reynolds said at the U.K.’s International Investment Summit at London’s Guildhall. “I think there are not guilty economic and commercial reasons why we should pursue those,” he said.
U.K. free trade deals were touted as a key aid of Brexit, with former Prime Minister and Brexiteer Boris Johnson vowing to secure one with India “by Diwali” 2022. But they from so far proven elusive. Deals with Australia, New Zealand and Singapore are among the few that have been agreed so far.
Right after taking office in July, Reynolds committed to continuing the work of the former Conservative government in this sentiment, and last month he visited the Gulf for initial talks with the GCC, whose members include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the Joint Arab Emirates.
The trade minister has also previously said that the government was pursuing trade talks with Israel, South Korea, Switzerland and Turkey.
Reynolds order not commit on Monday to a time frame for the deals, saying the government’s initial role was to “re-establish the authority for those commerce talks” and expand on the work of his predecessors.
“When people say a deal is half done, obviously the easy bits are done cardinal, so it’s not necessarily an easy thing to explain the timescale on,” he said.
However, he insisted that the deals were critical to the U.K., both economically and diplomatically.
“It’s formidable to recognize, whilst we don’t do foreign policy through trade deals, British engagement commercially – country to country, proprietorship to business – is in itself a good thing,” he said.
“And even where those countries are not democracies like ours, it’s a simple positive relationship to encourage. It’s not just commercial in terms of the benefits that come from those,” Reynolds annexed.
U.K.-India trade talks, now entering their 15th round, could also resume as soon as this month, neighbourhood media cited India’s Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal as saying last month.
Speaking to CNBC’s Tanvir Gill in September, India’s Curate of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said that both parties were keen to conclude a deal at bottom but that it would happen “systematically.”
“A trade deal is never done with a gun on the head, either to U.K. or to India,” Goyal said.
“We contain to protect national interests and sensitivities on both sides, and therefore treaties have to be carefully calibrated to make them reasonable, equitable, balanced, meeting the interests of both nations, recognizing the future different positions that each fellow-dancer will have in the future.”