New UK-India Trade Deal - A Huge Win for Life Sciences
Following Brexit, the UK is looking for new international trade opportunities. In life sciences, as well as other sectors, where better to push on than with India? That seems to be the UK Government's view.
This month, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a new Enhanced Trade Partnership, paving the way for a future UK-India Free Trade Agreement. Mr Johnson could not attend India's Republic Day celebrations in January nor a further re-arranged visit this month due to the pandemic. However, the two countries still met up virtually and announced this exciting new trade package, many of the great benefits will be felt in life sciences.
The package contains £500 million of new Indian investment into the UK, including a £240 million investment by the Serum Institute of India in the UK into their vaccine business, with a new sales function in the UK. Serum’s investment will enable the support of clinical trials, research and development, and potentially the manufacture of vaccines. The Serum Institute in India has manufactured hundreds of millions of doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.
Going the other way, British businesses have secured new export deals with India worth nearly £500 million, creating more than 400 British jobs. This includes CMR Surgical exporting its next-generation 'Versius' surgical robotic system to enable surgeons to perform surgery with minimal access in Indian hospitals.
This builds on a successful trade visit to India last December by the UK Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, in which he had visited the Serum Institute and several positive announcements were made. That had included establishing a new virtual hub to deliver vaccines for coronavirus and other deadly viruses, which will see British and Indian experts sharing knowledge on clinical trials and regulatory approvals.
The UK and India had also announced a memorandum of understanding between the UK's internationally leading medicines regulator, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and India’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO). The regulators agreed to more frequent discussions on UK-India vaccine and pharmaceutical regulations, improving standards and sharing information to control against the trade of unlicensed products.
In addition, last December also saw the two countries announce a new partnership to help UK and Indian scientists unlock the power of data, including the data within genes, to deliver better diagnostics and enhanced life-saving treatments for cancer, diabetes, maternal health challenges and rare diseases.
A Great Platform for Future Growth in Life Sciences
Trade between the UK and India is worth around £23bn a year, supporting more than half a million jobs. The life sciences relationship is already important with India supplying more than 25% of the NHS’s generic drugs. This is a great platform for further growth. It is excellent to see further enhancement of trade between these two countries, and hopefully there will be much more to come.
In August 2020, with facilitation form the Watford Chamber of Commerce, PING (the pharmaceuticals industry best practice group run by VWV) took part in a joint initiative with the Indian High Commission and FICCI (The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) to collaborate and develop new opportunities between UK and Indian pharma businesses.