UK trade and growth: One year on

28 Feb 2012

It has been one year since the launch of the Trade and Investment White Paper, which set out the Government’s plans to encourage UK exports and inward investment into the UK, and to strengthen international trading systems.

The White Paper set out how Government would:

• Help UK business trade and invest more and in new markets.
• Attract investment to the UK.
• Strengthen the multilateral trading system, including helping developing countries benefit from trade and investment.

• Read the Government’s assessment of progress so far.
• Download the Progress Report in full (PDF, 137 Kb) 

In the past year, Government has:

• Supported businesses to secure more than £800million of high value opportunities overseas.
• Helped more than 20,000 small and medium enterprises to export and break into new high growth markets like India, China, Brazil and Turkey.
• Launched new export finance products, to support smaller businesses to sell their products abroad.
• Introduced Strategic Relationship Management for large UK exporting firms and key inward investors.
• Worked with the World Trade Organisation to agree Russia’s accession, after 18 years of negotiations
• Helped to secure the Government Procurement Agreement at the WTO Ministerial meeting in December 2011.

In addition to this, the EU-South Korea Free Trade Agreement has now come into force, worth an estimated £500 million per year to the UK’s GDP. The British Government was one of the most prominent and active supporters of this deal.

The Government’s commitment to open trade and investment is ambitious and long-term. Find out about some of the work UK ministers have been doing in promoting UK businesses and trade around the world:

Links

• Trade and Investment for Growth
• Trade White Paper - One year on
• Trade White Paper - Next steps
• Foreign and Commonwealth Office - Commercial diplomacy
• Foreign and Commonwealth Office - Prosperity
• UK Trade & Investment