UK and India: How the relationship can be strengthened?

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Senthil Chengalvarayan, CNBC-TV18: In India, we sanguine about growth, 8.5%, maybe 9%. The only think that can upset growth, we think, is turmoil outside, so we would like to know what the danger you see lurking in Europe, in UK and can it push it back into recession?

Cameron: I think the biggest danger that has been facing Europe is the danger of sovereign debt default of countries not sorting out their public finances. We have taken those strong steps, the Chancellor and Business Secretary, to get deficit down and to bring it down over Parliament so that people can see that Britain has its public finance under control. Other European countries will be doing this.

Far from that being a threat to growth, I think that will actually help to build confidence in the European economies. Then we have to work with friends, including in India on how do we bring what we think would be the biggest stimulus to our economies, which is expanding the trade, completing the Doha Round, looking at investing in each other's countries. I think that's the big opportunity. But I think the threat in Europe was public finance issues which we are going a long way to deal with.

Doshi: Correct me, if I am wrong, but Britain has in the current past been an economy that's dominated by financial services. One of India's key aspirations is to become a manufacturing economy of size, scale, quality. How do you see this partnership evolving, what do you see Britain bringing to the table because clearly and to put it mildly our financial services sector is reasonably closed?

Cameron: I think that's one of the issues we are here to discuss. I think there are lots of partnership opportunities. I mean Britain is actually rebuilding some of its manufacturing, thanks to Indian investments, I mean Tata is now the largest manufacturer in Britain. We think there are opportunities though we will be discussing them in some of the meeting to encourage just as we in Britain have a very open economy and a welcoming investment, you are too here in India as well. But we think in areas like banking and insurance and retail there are further opportunities for openness that can benefit both countries. Those sometime means difficult decisions, that means taking on some vested interest, but we are keen to discuss those with our Indian friends and colleagues.

Chengalvarayan: What does Britain bring to the table today?

Cameron: Let me give you the two minute advertisement of what we bring to the table. I think we have some of the best universities in the world and I brought 14 vice chancellors with me. We have one of the strongest science bases and we have brought institutions like the Wellcome Trust with us. We have got expertise in several nuclear power and we are opening conversations with you on that front. We have a very strong defence industry and I was delighted to see BAE Systems and Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) agree yesterday to do the construction of more aircraft. We do have strong financial, insurance and banking services and the Chief Executives groups that we are establishing is going to have Ratan Tata on the Indian side and Peter Sands of Standard Chartered who are all over the world, on that side. So, I think we bring a lot of those things in terms of expertise that we can share with you.

But the one minute adverb for investing back in Britain is that we have the English language, we have a time zone between America and Asia, we have access to European markets, we have a highly trained workforce and as I said we are one of the most open and welcoming economies doing business in Britain. Investing in Britain is extremely straightforward compared with almost any other country.

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