There may be some frustration creeping in over the pace of negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA) between the UK and the GCC, with Gulf officials in particular calling for the process to be expedited.

The two sides launched the process in June 2022 and since then there have been five rounds of talks, the most recent of which wrapped up in Riyadh on 16 November.

The UK’s Department for Business & Trade said a few days later that technical discussions had been held on 21 policy areas and “good progress was made” with the draft text, with advances made in “the majority of chapters”.

The next round of talks is due to take place in the first quarter of 2024.

It is not clear how far the two sides are from reaching a deal, but Gulf officials have said they would like to see faster progress. At a meeting in Manama on 18 November, GCC secretary-general Jassem Mohamed Albudaiwi told the UK’s Minister of State for the Middle East Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (pictured) of the “urgency of expediting the pace of negotiations”.

The UK, however, appears to be in less of a rush. Speaking at the Arab-British Economic Summit in London on 20 November, the country’s chief negotiator on the FTA, Tom Wintle, said: “It is fundamentally about the deal, not the date. We are absolutely committed to working at pace. We have huge political will and commitment on both sides to get this done. I can vouchsafe that both sides are working flat out. But it is about getting the right agreement.”

He declined to be drawn on how much longer the process might take but added: “We are starting to see what I believe will be a really remarkable free trade agreement emerging.”

The slow pace of the UK-GCC negotiations contrasts with the speed at which the UAE has been signing its own versions of bilateral FTAs.

Over the past few years, the UAE has launched negotiations on comprehensive economic partnership agreements (CEPAs) with several countries. The first four deals – with India, Israel, Indonesia and Turkiye – took an average of less than seven months from launch to conclusion.

At heart, what an FTA is looking to do is to make business easier, cheaper, more secure
Tom Wintle, the UK’s chief negotiator for the UK-GCC FTA

Gainful opportunity

Trade between the UK and the six GCC economies was worth £61m ($77bn) in 2022, according to the UK authorities, who suggest that the removal of tariffs and other barriers could increase trade flows by “at least 16 per cent”.

When the negotiations first began, the UK government pointed to the food and drink sector along with manufacturing and renewable energy as areas that stood to benefit from any deal.

In his most recent comments, Wintle emphasised potential gains in the digital realm, “and in particular the opportunity and potential to grow the transformational technologies like e-commerce, like AI [artificial intelligence]”. He went on to talk about “an FTA that really harnesses both what is happening today but importantly the forces that will shape the world of work and commerce in the future”.

In terms of specific demands, Wintle said the UK is looking to “lock in legal certainty on electronic transactions so businesses can make greater use of things like e-contracts, e-signatures, paperless trading”. 

“At heart, what an FTA is looking to do is to make business easier, cheaper, more secure,” he added.

While the talks continue, companies continue to trade. Speaking on the sidelines of the conference, an executive at a technology company that is already present in the UAE and is considering expanding into Saudi Arabia was cautious about the difference an FTA might make. “It is the market opportunity that is the driver,” he said.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the UK already has FTAs in place with Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia, and has been on a push to sign more since leaving the EU. The talks with the GCC are just one of many sets of live negotiations, with others currently under way between the UK and South Korea, Canada and India, among others.

Trade issues also regularly come up in the strategic dialogues that the UK holds with countries from around the Middle East and North Africa region. In recent weeks, it has held them with Algeria, Bahrain and Tunisia.

Lord Ahmad told the Arab-British Economic Summit that in the recent meeting with Algeria, “we focussed on opportunities to increase our burgeoning trade relationship”, which he said had grown by 24 per cent in the past year to a value of £3bn.

Trade ties with Algeria go back a long way, with the two countries having signed a bilateral Treaty of Peace & Trade in 1682.

Lord Ahmad said the dialogues with Bahrain and Tunisia “focussed on areas such as climate, education, transport and much more as well”, and said in relation to the GCC trade talks that “we are progressing that well”.

“A trade deal with the GCC will boost our collaboration across a huge range of sectors, creating many business opportunities and importantly jobs on both sides, and attracting new investment,” he added.

“For the economies of the Arab world to become less dependent on carbon and fossil fuels, we must open doors for entrepreneurs to take advantage of the technologies – opportunities we can only grasp by removing barriers and facilitating growth, and working with our Gulf partners.”

As the long history of UK-Algeria trade shows, FTA deals are not a new concept even if, as with the ongoing GCC talks, it can take time to frame an agreement that takes into account the fast-moving nature of commerce.

Image: UK Minister of State for the Middle East Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon at the 2023 Arab-British Economic Summit