By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS,
London : Seventy Indian companies set up in Britain last year created 5,000 jobs, Britain’s trade and investment minister said ahead of a meeting with India’s Minister of State for Industry Ashwani Kumar Wednesday.
Trade between India and Britain grew by 9.1 percent last year, adding around 9 billion pounds to the total value, Lord Digby Jones told a gathering of British investors here.
In a speech to business executives at the India Investors Summit, the British minister also welcomed Indian High Commissioner Shiv Shankar Mukherjee’s statement Monday night that the economic reforms process in India is “irreversible”.
But Jones stressed that the speed of reforms was also “crucial”.
Speaking in the context of Tata Motors’ acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover earlier this year, the British minister pointed to the “responsibility of Tata the employers – the responsibility that comes with being an inward investor”.
In his meeting with Ashwani Kumar, Jones suggested that India and Britain work together to find technology solutions to climate change in partnership with countries like the US, Germany and France.
Kumar said British businesses could play a greater role than they do now in India’s physical and social infrastructure development, which needs an investment of $1.5 trillion in the next ten years.