London – Great Britain and India announced on Tuesday that they have agreed a free trade agreement for a long time that will reduce tariffs on Scottish whiskey and dozens of other products. The agreement occurs more than three years after negotiations began, and stagnant, under a previous British government.
Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, said in X that the agreement was “ambitious and mutually beneficial.”
The British government called him a “milestone.” He said the agreement will reduce Indian import taxes on whiskey, cosmetics, medical products, cars and aircraft and other assets of the United Kingdom.
Whiskey and Geneva tariffs will be reduced by half from 150% to 75% before falling to 40% in the year 10 of the agreement. Automotive tariffs will fall more than 100% to 10% under a fee.
Great Britain said that the agreement is expected to increase bilateral trade in 25.5 billion pounds ($ 34 billion) a year “in the long term”.
Mark Kent, executive director of the Scotch whiskey association, said the agreement would be “transformer” for the industry. India is one of the world’s largest whiskey markets. He said he had “the potential to increase exports of Scottish whiskey to India in one billion pounds in the next five years.”
Formal talks that began in 2022 in a Free trade agreement They were acclaimed by the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a key objective after the departure of Great Britain of the European Union in 2020. Johnson promised to have an agreement for Diwali in October of that year.
The two countries held 13 rounds of negotiations without advance before the conversations were suspended, while both nations celebrated 2024 general elections.
Modi was re -elected and Great Britain replaced the conservative government with one led by the Labor Party of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
