Various Agreements Singed between India and UK in November 2015
Among the various agreements, the notable are as follows:
Creative and retail
Merlin Entertainments is to open its first entertainment attraction in India. The first Madame Tussauds on the sub-continent will open in New Delhi in 2017. The company will invest up to £50 million over 10 years with a view to opening more of the company’s global brands in India in the coming years. The brands include LEGOLAND, Discovery Centre and Sealife Aquarium.
Logistics
TVS is opening a £20 million advanced logistics facility in Barnsley which is expected to create 100 new jobs, and may grow to 500 across the TVS Group over 5 years. As part of Team LEIDOS, the company is integral to delivering £500 million worth of procurement savings to MoD over 13 years.
Finance
HDFC has announced the proposal to issue rupee denominated bonds overseas up to $750 million (£490 million) under the RBI guidelines, in one or more tranches. HDFC intends to list the initial issue of bonds for trading on the London Stock Exchange.
Energy
Lightsource Renewable Energy Holdings has announced a £2 billion investment in India. They will design, install and manage around three gigawatts of solar power infrastructure in India over the next five years. This investment is expected to create 300 jobs and generate £42 million of revenue in the UK.
IT and cyber
Vodafone has announced further investments in India amounting to £1.3 billion in total. These include: £800 million to upgrade and expand its country-wide network coverage; £300 million in its high-end technology centres in Pune and Ahmedabad. The move is expected to create close to 6,000 jobs. A further £100 million will be invested to create a Tier-4 data centre, providing customised communication services for enterprises and businesses and another £100 million investment to create a payment bank focused on serving the unbanked and under banked and to accelerate India’s journey towards cashless economy.
Healthcare
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Indo UK Healthcare Pvt Ltd will open King’s College Hospital, Chandigarh. This is the first of a proposed eleven new UK-Indo Institutes for Health that will be developed across India, which, when fully implemented, would amount to a £1 billion investment into India’s healthcare system. A bilateral India/UK taskforce involving government representatives will help drive forward delivery of the proposed eleven UK-Indo Institutes for Health and foster greater collaboration in other areas of this important sector.
2017 as the UK-India Year of Culture
Both the countries have declared 2017 as the UK-India Year of Culture to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Indian independence. The Year of Culture 2017 will see an exciting festival of events celebrating the vibrant cultural history of the two countries. To mark the start of this cultural pairing, the British Library will be digitising 200,000 pages of their South Asian archives. Two Centuries of Indian Print will be part of a major programme to make the wealth of Indian printed books held by the British Library dating from 1714 to 1914 accessible to anyone around the globe.
