UK Starts Trade Deal Process with GCC

UK Starts Trade Deal Process with GCC

Containers are stacked at the Port of Felixstowe, Britain, January 28, 2021. REUTERS/Peter Cziborra/File Photo

The UK kicked off the process to sign a trade deal with Saudi Arabia and a group of other Gulf states, its latest post-Brexit target as it seeks deeper economic ties beyond the European Union.

Negotiations for a pact between Britain and the Gulf Cooperation Council, whose members also include Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Kuwait aim to start in 2022 following a 14-week consultation with the public and businesses, Bloomberg quoted UK’s Department for International Trade as saying in a statement.

British trade with the GCC was worth about $61 billion in 2019, seven percent of the size of Britain’s commerce with the EU in the same year.

The move comes at a time when Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is taking over Newcastle United FC from Mike Ashley after it received approval from the UK’s Premier League following a year and a half wait.

Britain is also closing in on post-Brexit free-trade pacts with Australia and New Zealand, and as it seeks accession to the CPTPP trans-Pacific trading bloc.

But negotiations with the US on a trade agreement have hit a standstill as President Joe Biden’s administration