UK using Oly to lobby for high-value trade deals to save economy?

London: The UK is laying out the red carpet for leaders and officials of “cash-rich” emerging countries such as India, Brazil and China during the Olympics to lobby and win high-value trade deals for British companies, a media report today said.

A building - Lancaster House - has been refurbished opposite Buckingham Palace to hold meetings between ministers and politicians from the target countries for multi-billion-pound deals that will help the ailing British economy, The Independent reported.

[caption id=“attachment_381999” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Downing Street wants to secure at least 4 billion of new deals during the Olympics beginning 27 July, a report in The Independent claimed. Getty Images[/caption]

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The deals in India that Britain reportedly seeks to win are: laying new metro lines or improving existing ones, the Navi Mumbai International Airport and the “regeneration” of Kolkata promised by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

The Independent said: “A Government lobbying operation of unprecedented scale is about to begin as foreign diplomats and businessmen descend on London for the 2012 Games,” and added that it had obtained a list of 50 investment projects around the world that British ministers and civil servants have been told to win during the next month.

Downing Street wants to secure at least 4 billion of new deals during the Olympics beginning 27 July, the report claimed.

It added: “Ministers have each been allocated specific target countries to try to close deals in the 50 projects. Many of the high-value deals are in the burgeoning ‘BRIC’ economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China or in the Gulf. There are also reconstruction and oil deals going in Libya and Iraq.”

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Lancaster House has reportedly been converted by interior designers and furniture-makers into a ‘British Business Embassy’ where executives, investors and policy makers will meet at a series of global investment summits.

Guests have been promised ‘visionary menus and food presentations’, the daily said.

PTI