Supporting India’s Sustainable Development Goals
Release date: 4th April 2022
This report highlights the contribution of UK businesses in India relative to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 17 interlinked global goals designed to be “a blueprint to achieve a better and core sustainable future for all”.
The UK and India are important economic and political partners. We have complementary economies and share global ambitions to lead the world in areas such as climate action and technological innovation. It is essential to the success of the bilateral partnership and to both countries’ domestic ambitions that trade, investment and collaboration is sustainable, and contributes to wider development.
Put simply, social and economic development go hand in hand. Education and healthcare improvements can assist economic growth for example, while economic growth is vital to providing resources that can have a wider social impact. Therefore, businesses have a direct impact on and responsibility for the social lives of more than just their employees, clients and stakeholders with whom they directly interact.
570 UK businesses are invested in India across sectors from digital services and advanced manufacturing to food and drink and higher education, and life science and healthcare.
As this report alludes to, they can, and already are, contributing to India’s sustainable development drive.
This is all the more important in 2022 as the UK and India are negotiating an FTA that is set to bring our countries trade and investment relationship to new heights. Furthermore, the FTA ambition falls under a wider 2030 Roadmap for future UK-India relations that seeks to increase cooperation in key areas such as climate action, defence and security, health, education, and people-to-people connections, as well as trade and investment.
All these areas will be instrumental in working towards the SDGs in both countries and simultaneously contributing to economic growth. As barriers to trade and investment fall, more businesses will be able to operate across the UK-India corridor, and meaningfully contribute to the development agenda.
