FM holds bilateral meeting with Rt Hon Mary Elizabeth Truss, Secretary of State for International Trade, UK

Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman  here today met Rt Hon Mary Elizabeth Truss, Secretary of State for International Trade, United Kingdom.

The Rt Hon Mary Elizabeth Truss, Secretary of State for International Trade, UK congratulated India for a forward-looking modern budget with its focus on investments and recovery in the post COVID-19 world.

Ms Truss acknowledged India as an influential player in FinTech, Digital Economy, Start-ups, Innovation and Data. Ms Truss further complimented India on the prompt and effective response to COVID-19 pandemic. The close collaboration in the sphere of COVID vaccine, demonstrated the close and trusted partnership between the two countries. The UK government looks forward to working closer with the world’s largest democracy.

Smt. Sitharaman highlighted the reforms brought in through the Budget and suggested areas of closer cooperation with UK, including investments in infrastructure, insurance sector, integrating small and medium enterprises in the global value chain.

The Finance Minister recognised that close collaboration between the two countries in various fields being pursued through India-UK annual Economic and Financial Dialogue. It was noted that India and UK are also working on Customs Cooperation and Mutual Administrative Assistance in Customs matters.

The meeting underlined the importance of UK as one of the important bilateral partners of India with strong liberal democracies, shared diaspora, trade and investment. It was recognised by both sides that the bilateral trade has been growing steadily since past decade and there exists immense potential for the two countries to enhance it further in the light of the wide spectrum of complementarities and strengths in the post-COVID-19 and post-Brexit period.