David Cameron in India

David Cameron's visit to India last week could well turn out to be one of the most important diplomatic trips of his time in number 10.

The commitment by both Governments to transform the nation’s relationship over the coming years is most welcome. Both leaders agreed that the India-UK relationship has great room for growth, in the political, cultural, security and economic realms that would be of benefit to both countries.

I am particularly pleased to see the commitment to significantly increase trade and investment between the 2 countries. I have long been calling for the level of interaction between the countries private sectors to be raised and am delighted that the UK-India CEO’s Forum is being set up under the Peter Sands of Standard Chartered and Rattan Tata of Tata Group (both CBC members of long standing) to provide the private sector perspective on strengthening the economic relationship. I look forward to working with the Forum in the future.

Hon Kamal Nath, India’s Minister for Road Transport speaking earlier this year at our India Infrastructure Forum (IIF) said the next 10 years will be India’s Infrastructure Decade. The opportunities offered by this are enormous, tackling India’s infrastructure deficit will require cooperation between the Indian government and the national and international private sector, and the UKs business should be leaders in this. To help push this Lord Adonis, the then UK Secretary of State for Transport, initiated a MoU between the Indian Government and the UK at the IIF to work together on road development, a process that was continued during the Prime Minister’s visit last week.

It is great to see the New British Prime Minister taking such an interest in strengthening the Bi-lateral relationship between the 2 countries, in a report we produced in 2008, and are currently in the process of updating, we found that the UK was India’s most significant investor, a trend we hope continues.

And finally I was delighted to see the strong commitment made by both Prime Ministers during their meeting to work together to ‘strengthen the Commonwealth’ as an important global body.

Trade Talks and the Financial Crisis

The current state of the world economy and the financial crisis makes the successful conclusion of the Doha Round of trade talks all the more unlikely.

The Heads of the G8 Countries are making all the right noises about resisting the draw of protectionism in a retracting market situation and with increasing unemployment at home, but for all this, the result is the same; the Round is not likely to be completed in the present climate and almost certainly not within the year.

While I congratulate Pascal Lamy for his continuous and seemingly untiring efforts to keep moving forward with the Round, I do not believe that either the upcoming G8 or G20 meetings will hasten the conclusion of the Doha talks.

What to do in the Wake of Doha Collapse

The Collapse of the Doha talks in Geneva last week is a shame, it weakens the WTO as an international institution and gives us a worrying view of the international communities intransigence even when perusing things that would benefit all, namely Freer Trade. What will happen when the harder and more devise issue of Climate Change is up for debate?

I am sure Pascal Lamy will attempt to resurrect the Round, but when is another matter, the upcoming US elections will make this all the harder, with both candidates advocating differing positions - negotiations may well be back at square one before they even start.

In the mean time then, I believe that each Country represented at the talks should demonstrate its commitment to Free Trade, by unilaterally putting in place what they would have accepted in Geneva. If India and China, for example, were to open their agricultural industries, even with the contentious ‘safeguard trigger’ in place, trade would still increase and all would benefit.

This I believe is the best way forward; it will demonstrate the international community’s commitment to Free Trade, and make resurrecting the Round easier as everyone’s position will be readily apparent when talks eventually restart.