New Delhi: India and the UK’s free trade deal went into effect on Wednesday (July 15), with the pact eliminating tariffs on almost all Indian exports to Britain as well as ending or reducing levies applying to 92% of British imports arriving in India.Indian tariffs on British Scotch whiskey immediately stand halved at 75% – and will drop to 40% in ten years – and levies on UK-built premium cars will be slashed from up to 110% to 10% under a quota system that will be progressively liberalised. Meanwhile, domestic sectors that are slated to benefit include textiles, leather, footwear, gems and jewellery, marine products, and sports goods and toys.The commerce and industry ministry in New Delhi said that India exported consignments worth $140 million to the UK on Wednesday itself. These, it said, included goods from the electronics, pharmaceuticals and gems and jewellery sectors. Britain for its part shipped a symbolic package of goods to Mumbai, including a bottle of Scotch.Alongside the free trade deal, an agreement exempting Indian and British workers in the other country from paying two separate social security contributions also went into effect.Wednesday’s deal marks “the quickest turnaround for the UK” in terms of implementing a free trade deal after its signing, British high commissioner to India Lindy Cameron told presspersons in Delhi. The two sides reached the deal in May last year – a month after US President Donald Trump first upended global trade relations with his tariff regime – and inked it two months later.Cameron acknowledged the wider geopolitical context within which the deal goes into effect, echoing UK trade minister Chris Bryant’s remark that the pact “sends a message to the rest of the world that the rules-based order works”.In the long run the deal will, she said, increase trade between the two countries by £25 billion or Rs 32.57 lakh crore every year, in addition to boosting both sides’ GDPs by around £5 billion each annually.Another feature of the agreement is that it eases access for British firms to India’s procurement market and guarantees reach for India into procurements in the UK. “India’s central procurement market is worth like £38 billion annually. And a great example of how this might take effect … is urban infrastructure,” Cameron recalled.Writing in The Wire last month, trade expert Ajay Srivastava noted that British companies will be able to compete for some 40,000 Indian government tenders every year in sectors including infrastructure, healthcare, energy and transport. Indian firms, he had cautioned however, “are unlikely to gain comparable opportunities in the UK procurement market”.Although the deal was expected to come into force in May, the two sides hit a hurdle after Whitehall earlier this year said it would sharply reduce how much steel its imports free of tariffs and double the duty it charges on shipments above that quota.They appeared to reach a breakthrough last month, with New Delhi announcing that 85% of Indian exporters “are out of the steel measures”. Under Britain’s new restrictions, it said, India’s interests would be protected by way of country-specific and residual quotas as well as access under the Authorised Use Scheme.A British official on Wednesday indicated that Britain sees the steel issue as separate from the trade deal, adding that the import restrictions were brought in for national security reasons.Also ‘separate’ from the deal is the UK’s upcoming carbon border adjustment mechanism – under which it will charge higher tariffs on countries with less stringent climate policies, and from which India had sought an exemption – the official said, clarifying Britain’s view on the issue.