India, UK signed bilateral MoU to allow more flights to boost tourism and trade

India and the United Kingdom (UK) in February 2017 signed a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to allow more flights to boost tourism and trade in both the countries.

The agreement was formally signed by Pusapati Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Lord Ahmad in New Delhi.

While Raju is the Union Minister of Civil Aviation, Lord Ahmad is a representative of the UK Government. He led a delegation of British companies for the 2017 CAPA India Aviation Summit, which was held for two days in Mumbai in the second week of February 2017.

Features of the MoU are –

• The MoU seeks to ease restrictions on the number of scheduled flights between India and the UK.

• As part of the agreement, limits on flights from key Indian cities including Chennai and Kolkata have been scrapped.

• This measure will allow a greater range of flights for passengers while providing a boost to trade and tourism for both the countries.

• The agreement also opened all destinations in the UK for Indian carriers for code share flights.

• Reciprocally, the UK carriers can also operate code share flights to any international airport in India.

The present MoU is a part of the series of agreements signed between both the countries recently to boost bilateral relations. Some of the other recent agreements are -

• MoU on Ease of Doing Business: The agreement facilitates sharing of best practices and technical assistance for effective implementation of the initiatives of Union Government to improve its ranking in the Ease of Doing Business Index.

• Some of the important areas of cooperation under this agreement are - support to businesses and startups, tax administration, regulatory regimes, competition economics, etc.

• MoU for Cooperation in the field of Intellectual Property: The MoU envisages establishing a mechanism for furthering cooperation between the Intellectual Property Offices of India and the UK in the field of IP and related information technology services.