Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: The India–United Kingdom Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement has now been in force for a fortnight, and the first thing it changed was paperwork. From July 15, close to 99% of India’s export lines entered the United Kingdom duty-free, covering very nearly the whole value of bilateral trade. On day one alone, more than fifty consignments worth over $140 million were dispatched from Indian ports and airports under the agreement — not a ceremonial shipment but a queue of exporters who had been waiting for the rate to change.
The agreement was signed in July 2025 after fourteen rounds of negotiation, and the twelve months since were spent on ratification in both parliaments and on the last contested chapters. Steel was the final hurdle, resolved by a compromise that gives duty-free entry to roughly 85% of eligible Indian steel exports and an enlarged country-specific quota for the remainder. Alongside CETA, an agreement on social security contributions — the Double Contribution Convention — came into force on the same date, which matters to every Indian professional posted to Britain on a short-term assignment and to the firms that send them.
Fourteen rounds, then ratification: CETA was signed in July 2025 and took effect on July 15, 2026, alongside a social security agreement that removes double contributions for Indian professionals posted to Britain.
A trade agreement is only a document until a consignment moves under it. Fifty of them moved on the first morning.
At a Glance
• In force: July 15, 2026; signed July 2025 after 14 negotiating rounds
• Coverage: duty-free access for close to 99% of India’s export lines; almost 100% of bilateral trade value
• Scope: 30 chapters — goods, services, digital trade, labour and environment provisions
• Day one: 50-plus consignments worth over $140 million dispatched from India
• Steel settlement: duty-free for about 85% of eligible Indian steel exports, plus an enhanced country-specific quota
• Alongside: the Double Contribution Convention on social security, in force from the same date
• Current bilateral trade: close to $56 billion
• Projection: $100–120 billion by 2030
Bilateral trade currently runs at close to $56 billion, and both governments expect it to roughly double to between $100 billion and $120 billion by 2030. Whether it does depends less on the treaty text than on who uses it. Duty-free access is worth nothing to an exporter who cannot produce a rules-of-origin certificate, and the firms best placed to move fast — large textile houses, engineering exporters, pharmaceutical manufacturers with UK registrations — are precisely the ones that already had the compliance departments to handle it. The first-day consignment list is likely to be dominated by them.
The constructive work of the next six months therefore sits with the smaller exporter. Three things would widen the base quickly: rules-of-origin help desks at the major export promotion councils, so a mid-sized firm can establish its qualifying content without hiring a consultancy; a plain-language line-by-line schedule published in Hindi and the major regional languages, so a Tiruppur knitwear unit or a Moradabad brassware exporter can look up its own HS code rather than a summary; and a public dashboard tracking utilisation by sector and firm size, which turns the question of whether CETA is working from an argument into a measurement. India has now signed the agreement, ratified it and shipped under it. Making sure the gains reach beyond the firms that were always going to capture them is the part that is still in hand.
