A File photo of Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India shaking hands after Britain’s Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Jonathan Reynolds, left, and Piyush Goyal, Minister of Industry and Supply of India, right, signed a free trade agreement at Chequers near Aylesbury, England
| Photo Credit:
Kin Cheung
India’s farm commodities may not gain substantially from FTA with the UK as the country is not a major importer of raw produce and prefer mainly processed products instead. At the same time, there is no threat from the UK to Indian agriculture as it does not have any substantial export of raw agriculture produce to any country.
Even as dairy has been kept out of the FTA purview, UK imports about $3.9 billion worth dairy products annually. As its annual import of processed food products is among the top 10 countries in the world, India may have advantage provided it meets the quality standards, experts said.
Top farm goods
According to India’s agri export promotion body APEDA data, the top 10 farm goods imported by UK are cereal preparations, alcoholic beverages, fresh fruits, misc processed items, fresh vegetables, dairy products, cocoa products, processed meat, spices and processed vegetables and in 2023 CY those were valued at $46.34 billion. Its marine products import stands at 11th position with $2.97 billion.
The US Department of Agriculture data show that UK’s top 10 export of raw agriculture produce were dairy (including milk and cheese), barley, wheat, chicken meat, corn, sugar, soyabean meal, rapeseed meal and rapeseed oil and those in terms of volume were 2.88 million tonnes. Though the UK also imports buffalo meat ($ 1.6 billion in 2023), it does not buy from India.
Among APEDA’s list of 27 categories of agriculture products which the agency promotes in foreign countries, buffalo meat is placed on third after non-Basmati and Basmati rice with over $ 4 billion shipments annually.
Though the government said dairy, edible oils and apples have been kept out of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the UK and India, there is a lot more clarity to emerge, an expert said pointing out absence, specifically of buffalo meat, in the list of items mentioned in the document for UK.
“The UK document is lists items under broad categories whereas Indian documents have detailed and specific items, mentioning how the duty structure will be changed to zero or not. For instance, basmati rice is not separately mentioned in UK list and it can be assumed to be covered under ‘rice’ whereas Indian list also mentions about Basmati rice, which is only grown in India and Pakistan,” an expert said, adding the biggest challenge is UK‘s non-tariff barriers like stricter limit of maximum residues limit for presence of pesticides.
Under the agreement, UK has allowed to bring down import duty to zero on “Rice in the husk” (paddy) and “Brown rice”, it has not agreed to abolish duty on “semi-milled or wholly milled rice”. This will allow Basmati rice to be shipped in the form of “brown rice” to get the zero duty benefit or if the conventional export continues. Indian consignments have to pay (UK Pound) 121/tonne duty.
Basmati export
India had exported 2.14 lakh tonnes of rice worth $215.34 million in 2024-25 which included 1.84 lt (worth $ 194.37 million) of basmati rice and 30,460 tonnes (worth $ 20.97 million) of non-basmati rice.
“If the basmati rice exporters carefully plan, this FTA could bring revenue $100 million annually. In case of South Indian rice varieties, the market is going to consolidate and grow to the tune $32 million. This FTA unveils huge market opportunities in the processed food market.,” said foreign trade policy expert S Chandrasekaran.
Of $657.03 million of agri products (27 categories handled by Apeda) excluding spices, seafood, tea, coffee to UK and Ireland in 2024-25, Basmati rice had the largest share. But all processed food products including prepared cereals, processed fruits, vegetables, juices, nuts put together had a bigger share of $237.66 million.
In total agriculture products, the India’s exports to UK stand at $37.52 billion but import from UK is only $ 811 million.
Published on July 27, 2025
