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Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally signed the recently announced UK-India trade deal during talks held on Thursday. Hosting the Indian leader at his Chequers country estate, northwest of London, Starmer hailed the agreement as a "landmark moment" for both countries, praising Britain's "unique bonds" with India.
"This is not the extent or the limit of our collaboration with India," added the British premier, whose year-old government is struggling to fire up an economy weakened by years of stagnant growth and high inflation.
"We have unique bonds of history, of family and of culture and we want to strengthen our relationship further, so that it is even more ambitious, modern and focused on the long term," he said.
Starmer and Modi announced in May they had struck a free trade agreement that the British government says will eventually add £4.8 billion ($6.5 billion) a year to the UK economy.
The UK and India hope the accord will boost trade between the two countries by £25.5 billion, as well as bolstering the British economy and wages.
Modi, standing alongside Starmer during a media appearance, described the deal as a "blueprint for our shared prosperity".
Britain and India are the sixth and fifth largest global economies respectively, with a trade relationship worth around £41 billion and investment supporting more than 600,000 jobs across both countries. The accord slashes tariffs on imports of UK goods into India, including whisky, cosmetics and medical devices. In return, the United Kingdom will cut tariffs on clothes, footwear and food products including frozen prawns from India.
Starmer and Modi were also likely to discuss last month's Air India disaster in which 241 people died when a London-bound flight crashed after taking off from Ahmedabad in western India.
Some 169 Indian passengers and 52 British nationals were killed in the June 12 crash, one of the deadliest plane disasters in terms of the number of British fatalities.
Starmer and Modi have met twice recently, at the G7 summit in Canada last month and at the G20 meeting in Brazil last year.
