Deadline Friday 24th November
DIT would like to offer your business network the opportunity to contribute to a consultation that the Department for International Trade (DIT) is undertaking, to ensure we understand the current challenges for UK businesses seeking to work with a number of markets across the world.
DIT currently hosts Ministerial Trade Dialogues with 13 markets: Azerbaijan, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Qatar (inaugural dialogue), Russia (currently on hold), Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and Vietnam to discuss bilateral trade and investment issues. The Ministerial Trade Dialogues (sometimes with the title JETCO – Joint Economic and Trade Committee) help to strengthen the UK’s economic, industrial and commercial ties with these markets. They play a key role in our objective of building a truly Global Britain – a great, global, trading nation that is one of the firmest advocates for free trade anywhere in the world.
The MTDs cover commercial and trade policy issues, and serve as an important tool in strengthening our bilateral trading relationships. They also provide a platform for us to address key market access issues for businesses. Examples of the kinds of barriers we are interested in knowing about include; foreign investment restrictions, inadequate protection of intellectual property rights, discriminatory taxation or licensing procedures, arbitrary customs procedures, lack of recognition of international standards etc. We will need specific, supporting evidence for an issue in order to be able to take appropriate action on it.
DIT is planning to hold Ministerial Trade Dialogues (MTD) with Azerbaijan, China, Qatar and Turkey over the next quarter. Ahead of these Dialogues, we would like to hear from businesses to help understand the high level issues that they face, specifically those issues that our Ministers could raise with their counterparts in the market.
DIT is particularly keen to understand what specific actions HMG could ask of our partners’ Governments that would result in easier, or new, access for UK businesses to that market.
Survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/DIT_Business_Consultation, can DIT please have your responses by Friday 24th November 2017. This will enable us brief Ministers ahead of Ministerial Trade Dialogues taking place over the next quarter.
