The 12th Round of Ministerial India-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue (RFD) was held in New Delhi yesterday. While the Indian delegation was led by Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, the United Kingdom (UK) delegation was led by Retired Honorary Jeremy Hunt, MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, UK.
The dialogue focussed on enhancing the knowledge exchange, cooperation and support between India and the UK to further the infrastructure development priorities, robust fintech partnership and sustainable finance towards long-term growth objectives.
The two countries reiterated the commitment to deepen their collaboration on financial services, building on each other’s strengths and supporting mutual aspirations towards financial inclusion and sustainable development.
The duo also deliberated on enhancing mutual cooperation on macro-economic and multi-lateral issues, and also announced the India-UK Infrastructure Finance Bridge, a collaborative initiative to leverage expertise and investment in support of India’s National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP).
The dialogue concluded with the adoption of a joint statement by the Union Finance Minister and Chancellor of Exchequer.
“We welcome the increase in the UK-India financial services trade over the last year, and agree to work together to grow this further in line with our joint ambition to double trade by 2030 as part of the India-UK Roadmap. The Financial Markets Dialogue held in London in April 2023, provided an opportunity to deepen our cooperation across a variety of subsectors, including banking insurance, pensions, capital markets, asset management and sustainable finance,” Sitharaman and Hunt said in the joint statement,
On the sidelines of the dialogue, the ministers also participated in the India-UK Financial Partnership (IUKFP) meeting co-chaired by Uday Kotak from Kotak Mahindra Bank and Bill Winters from Standard Chartered Bank. The participants included key business leaders from India and UK as well as the representatives from financial regulators of both the countries.
The IUKFP meeting, inter-alia, held discussions on policy papers as well as ideas for financial exchange and collaboration, between the two countries.
