Cameron Asks India to Open Its Trade Doors Wider

MUMBAI — Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain arrived in India on Monday asking his hosts to open up their economy because Britain had done the same for Indian companies.

“Britain is an open economy, and we encourage that investment,” he said. “I think, in return, we should be having a conversation about opening up the Indian economy, making it easier to do business here, allowing insurance and banking companies to do more foreign direct investment.”

He said that he was proud that Indian companies like Tata, the owner of the British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover, had such a strong foothold in the British economy but that he expected a reciprocal arrangement.

Mr. Cameron’s trip, his second visit to India as prime minister, comes days after a similar trade mission by President François Hollande of France, underlining how Europe’s debt-stricken states were competing to tap into India, which has one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Mr. Cameron’s delegation, which includes representatives of more than 100 companies, is the biggest taken abroad by a British prime minister. It includes four ministers and nine members of Parliament.

Companies with executives traveling with Mr. Cameron include BAE Systems, BP, De La Rue, Diageo, the British unit of EADS, HSBC, JCB, Lloyd’s, the London Stock Exchange, London Underground, Rolls-Royce and Standard Chartered.

Mr. Cameron will meet his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh, as well as the Indian president, Pranab Mukherjee.

Mr. Cameron’s office said business deals to be announced during the trip would create 500 British jobs and safeguard an additional 2,000.

Investors have been clamoring for years for India to open up to more foreign investment, and Mr. Cameron complained Monday that India still had outdated rules and regulations.

But the entreaties have been resisted by Indian opposition groups worried about potential damage to home-grown businesses.

At a time when the British government is struggling to get its economy growing, officials see India as a key strategic partner in what Mr. Cameron has called a “global race.”

“India is going to be one of the leading nations in this century, and we want to be your partner,” Mr. Cameron told Indian workers at Hindustan Unilever, a unit of the British-Dutch consumer products giant Unilever.

Mr. Cameron’s visit to India, which won independence from Britain in 1947 and whose colonial history remains a sensitive subject for many Indians, will include stops in Mumbai and New Delhi.

Mr. Cameron has said the two countries enjoy a “special relationship,” a term usually reserved for Britain’s ties with the United States, but it is a relationship undergoing profound change. The Indian economy is forecast to overtake Britain’s in size in the decades ahead. In a nod to how the relationship is evolving, Britain will stop giving India aid after 2015.

Mr. Cameron is expected to lobby India to do more to allow foreign retailers like Tesco, which sells food and consumer goods, to open stores in the country. New Delhi changed the rules last year to allow foreign chains to operate in India but attached conditions including requirements over local sourcing of items and investment in local infrastructure, and restrictions on what goods could be sold.

India is expected to spend $1 trillion in the next five years on infrastructure, and Mr. Cameron said he wanted British companies to help India develop new cities and districts along a corridor stretching 1,000 kilometers, or 620 miles, from Mumbai to Bangalore, generating investment projects worth up to $25 billion.

Some British companies have run into problems in the past. The mobile phone operator Vodafone has repeatedly clashed with the Indian authorities over taxes, and the oil company Royal Dutch Shell has asked the British government to raise a tax dispute it has with India during Mr. Cameron’s visit.

Mr. Cameron promised Monday to try to revive Indian interest in the Eurofighter even though New Delhi has chosen a French-made rival and as a graft scandal is engulfing a military deal that involves a British-Italian company.

India said Friday that it wanted to cancel a $740 million contract for a dozen helicopters made by AgustaWestland, the British-Italian subsidiary of Finmeccanica of Italy, over bribery claims.

That will not make Mr. Cameron’s job of persuading India to buy more civil and military hardware easier, and Indian officials have told the local news media they intend to press Mr. Cameron for “a fully-fledged report” on what Britain knows about the scandal.

Britain has said it wants to wait until the end of the Italian investigation before commenting in full, but has given India an interim report on the subject. “This is something for the Italian and Indian authorities to deal with, and I’m sure they will,” Mr. Cameron said Monday, saying issues had been raised that needed to be settled.

Mr. Cameron said he would tell the Indian government that the Eurofighter jet, which is partly built in Britain, remained an attractive option if India decided to review a multibillion-dollar deal to buy 126 French-made Rafale fighters. New Delhi rejected the Eurofighter last year.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/business/global/cameron-asks-india-to-open-its-trade-doors-wider.html?partner=rss&emc=rss